


The Line

by anstoirm



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gameplay/Story Segregation, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, game mechanics in narrative, playing merry hell with canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2019-10-06 22:52:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 53,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstoirm/pseuds/anstoirm
Summary: ...and where to draw it.The man she loves is dead, and Quinn isn't handling it well. She knows the Drifter and his gambit probably aren't good for her, but it's so much harder to find the light than it is to fall to the darkness--and corruption is easy when the darkness whispers promises that the light refuses to grant.





	1. dead reckoning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> n. to find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited 6/10/2019

All around her people are moving, and Quinn feels like she’s at a standstill.

The air is chilly, heralding the rapidly approaching winter season in the Last City and bringing with it a rapid shift from lighter clothes for civilians to heavier coats and scarves. 

The regular hustle and bustle of the Tower hasn’t been impeded by the shift, guardians moving to and fro, visiting the Cryptarch with secrets uncovered out in the wilds or Banshee for a tune-up of their favorite weapons. Techs rush from the hangar to the new Vanguard hall, carrying urgent news to Zavala and Ikora, and other civilians that help keep things running smoothly gather around the newly placed heat lamps or sit at outdoor café booths while on breaks.

The shopkeepers, likewise, are busy as ever. Tess, even, seems flustered with how many people are running by to purchase gloves and scarves thanks to the sudden cold snap.

Quinn tugs at the hood of her armored jacket, and thinks that maybe she needs to buy a scarf as well, but she can barely feel the cold; whether it’s from the suffocating numbness she’s been fighting for the last several weeks or her body simply not registering it after enough exposure, she has no idea.

Her head's been foggy as of late. Save for the small handful of people she regularly talks to—rather, _talked_ to until recently—she barely sees passing faces, has a hard time recognizing voices, and by extension struggles to realize when someone is trying to get her attention. Time passes without her even noticing it.

It’s not that she wants to be so distant, but try as she might her connection to the moving world around her had snapped, leaving her adrift and dazed.

Ikora has tried to speak with her several times since her team had returned to the Tower from the Reef, Cayde’s lifeless body cradled in the arms of their team leader. Tried to bridge the unintended gap that had formed between her and the Vanguard after their return.

No one knows he’s dead. No one but her fireteam, the Vanguard, and the small group of people Ikora and Zavala trusted to keep the loss secret.

‘ _We can’t afford the hit to morale_ ,’ Zavala had said, while Quinn struggled to not reach out and slap him for being colder than the weather had gotten, ‘ _the people are still afraid, thanks to the Red Legion assault. They need to know their Vanguard is unified and whole and keeping them safe._ ’

Well, the Vanguard _isn’t_ unified and whole, and now there’s a hole punched through her chest, growing larger and threatening to swallow her with the few people that recognized her as _Cayde’s girl_. ‘ _Why isn’t he in the tower_?’ They ask her, and she has to swallow around the stone that finds its way into her throat every time, ‘ _The Commander said he went out scouting, but it’s been a while_.’

Her tongue always feels heavy with the lie when she tells them that he’s just keeping radio silent for the safety of the people here.

And so, the activity in the Tower keeps moving, blurring around her while she finds herself losing time, wandering with no true destination or goal, from one end of the Tower to the other and sometimes getting herself lost venturing down into the still rebuilding City itself. No matter where her feet take her, she never finds a place she feels comfortable in for longer than an hour at most.

Her fireteam is in nearly the same place she is—unsure of where to direct their focus, of what to do after the fall of the Prison and the loss of the Hunter Vanguard. They’ve gone out on a few tactical strikes, done some minor system housekeeping, but they all agree nothing feels satisfying about it anymore.

But none of them are feeling the same kind of pain she is. The deep, aching loss of someone she had begun to see as her other half, someone she’d given her heart to only for it to die with him. Kel, perhaps, understands it best, and it's probably why he spends as much time as he can tracking her down in whatever remote spot she’d found to hide in to sit quietly with her just so she isn’t completely alone.

Of course, it probably isn’t his only reason for doing so—he also understands that right then, she doesn’t _want_ to be comforted. She wants to take her ship and haul ass back out to the Reef, to hunt down the Scorn barons and put them down, to corner the disgraced Awoken prince and plant a bullet in his skull for what he’d done.

She doesn’t want sympathy and comfort. She wants Uldren Sov _dead_.

She isn’t the only one, her entire team vocally expressing their desire to return to the Reef to exact retribution for the cruel, slow, and painful true death the Barons and Uldren had given Cayde.

But Uldren Sov is the crown prince of the Reef, and the City can’t risk a war with the Awoken, not so close on the heels of the Red Legion’s assault and takeover of the City. Nevermind that Uldren had lost his mind and gone rogue, nevermind that the Reef’s structure had crumbled after Oryx decimated their fleet and killed their Queen. 

No, nevermind any of that—they still can’t risk it. Zavala had forbidden retaliation, told them all to focus on the safety of the City and the People they were meant to protect, and when Quinn had let him know exactly what she thought of that decision he had placed a system lock on her ship and effectively, infuriatingly, put her on house arrest.

Glyph, the ghost that had claimed her as its own a while back, materializes in the periphery of her vision. It doesn’t understand what she’s going through, not really, and because of the unique relationship between them—it hadn’t risen her from the grave, and so their light isn’t one and the same—it can’t feel what she does. Regardless, it’s worried about her, and it’s made that known many times since her lockdown had begun. “You’re doing it again.” It says plainly, glowing purple ‘eye’ blinking at her.

Quinn rearranges her expression, figuring she’d probably looked something bordering the line of _murderous_. “I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask if you were.” It points out, the facets of its white, diamond-shaped shell flitting around in what she recognizes as agitation. “But you’re clearly not.”

No, she _definitely_ is not, and she’s far too proud to admit it.

There’s still so much she doesn’t know about herself, but she can already feel that she doesn’t and never has handled raw emotions like this well, and she knows that sooner or later, she’s going to snap. Though her memory is so foggy, she’s pretty sure she’s never felt this bad before in her life. It's almost funny that losing Cayde is affecting her this badly when she's decently aware of losing _something_ in the past—her home? Her family? Her purpose?—and yet whatever caused her to wake up from stasis, alone, with few memories and in a world she didn’t recognize pales in comparison.

How is her snap going to take shape, she wonders morbidly. Is a passing comment, regardless of what it is, going to be too much and send her into a violent frenzy? She’d had an infrequent nightmare of nearly beating someone to death with her bare hands, and with the way her mental state is lately she's beginning to fear it's less a nightmare and more a memory.

Is she going to throw herself off the Tower and plummet the handful of miles to the ground to her death, knowing that she, unlike her fellow guardians, can’t be revived? Probably not—she knows enough about herself to know that killing herself isn’t in her playbook. Too stubborn for it.

Would she end up like Uldren? Rogue and thrown to rot in a cell, losing her mind after losing someone she loved dearly and taking it out on those she counts as allies?

She shivers at the thought.

She loves the City. Loves the Vanguard and its consultants, loves Amanda and the new addition, Hawthorne—Shaxx as well, and even Banshee, gruff and antisocial as he is, is someone she counts as a close friend.

But she feels _other_ now.

Rather, she feels _other_ once again—the same way she felt before Cayde had poked and prodded her into opening up, drawing her into the fold of guardians, making her feel welcome and home rather than just a strange anomaly no one could make sense of. She knows in truth it’s more likely just because she knows Cayde is gone for good and everyone else around her has no clue, but the darker parts of her heart are telling her it’s because Cayde was the first and closest tie she had to feel like she belonged here.

Traveler damn her, she needs to find something to do before she spirals further.

Heedless of the steep drop off the Tower before her, Quinn uncrosses her legs and stands, hopping down from the thick concrete railing she’d been sitting on onto the tile of the courtyard in front of the Tower’s guardian housing. To her right is the gaudy, over decorated pavilion that Executor Hideo had claimed for his faction—conveniently located right in front of the apartment block so he can pester people into supporting him.

“I swear, that last Gambit match was rigged.”

The statement catches her ear as she passes by the pavilion, and she stops; Glyph, hovering behind her shoulder as she walks, absent-mindedly bumps into her and then in a fit of embarrassed energy flits around her head before settling again.

“We almost had them,” another guardian says, voice muted and difficult to catch through the rest of the chatter around the plaza.

The first guardian that had spoken waves in the corner of her vision. “No, we _had_ it, but it’s apparently as rigged as competitive Crucible, I guess.”

Dropping her eyes from the pinned notice on a nearby board she’d been pretending to read, she looks over at the pair of guardians, and both of them cease talking immediately, staring back at her. Glowering, really. She’s not surprised. New Monarchy supporters tend to be haughty and standoffish in her experience—a reflection of the arrogant wannabe king that runs the faction.

Rolling her shoulders, Quinn continues through the arch on her way to the main plaza.

 _Gambit_.

It’s something she’s heard other guardians mention over the last few months, always in secret, always hushed. It's like they're trying to keep it from being widespread knowledge. She’s been wondering what it is considering it seems to be happening under the Vanguard’s nose—definitely confirmed, now that she knows it's some type of competition.

The only guardian-versus-guardian competition in the City is the Crucible, and Shaxx hasn’t ever mentioned a match type called _Gambit_. Maybe it's something he's testing out before making it a part of the official Crucible lineup, but Shaxx hasn’t ever been good at keeping secrets about his pet project, and she’s sure the only playtesters he’d allow are the elite of the Crucible—those guardians that devote their time almost exclusively to engaging in a battle royale for sport and entertainment or for training newly risen guardians. None of the guardians she had overheard speaking of it were recognizable or decorated with Crucible emblems.

She changes direction and passes directly through the bazaar without stopping.

When she reaches the Crucible pavilion in the main plaza and mentions it to Shaxx, he confirms he has no game type called _Gambit_ and has no intention of making one at the time. He does, however, tell her that he’s overheard mention of such a gametype as well, but has no idea what it is or who might be running it. As he speaks to her his tone takes on something frustrated, and it becomes obvious that he has concerns about its existence.

It’s understandable.

Guardians fighting guardians is a subject that makes almost everyone uncomfortable, the Dark Ages of warlord guardians and light-fueled massacres such a black stain on the history of humanity post-Collapse that even _she_ knows of it and many older guardians refuse to speak of it. 

There's a reason the Crucible is the only accepted form of it—it's heavily regulated, every match monitored constantly by Shaxx’s quartermaster frames whether it be professional competitive Crucible or unaired training. Certain weapons are banned because of a danger to ghosts, certain people are barred from participating (herself included) due to either skill imbalance or a demeanor that threaten participants.

So what the hell is Gambit? Why does she keep hearing about it? And why do only a small number of guardians seem to even _know_ about it?

She can feel a fixation start to form, her mind desperately latching onto it in an effort to avoid the things that had been consuming her for weeks. She _needs_ to know what the hell this is, a gnawing pest in her brain telling her to take the diversion while it’s in front of her. Something about it feels dangerous and she can’t put her finger on why, but she dismisses the instinct.

She hears nothing else of this secret competition throughout the Tower as she wanders, though she keeps her eyes and ears trained and focused. Glyph isn’t sure why she wants it to keep an ear out for encrypted discussions on closed channels, but it does so anyway.

She’s descending the steps to the hangar when Glyph blips in surprise, its voice in her head. ‘ _Hold on, I’ve got something_.’ It says. ‘ _Someone’s ghost slipped, I caught a mention of it_.’

“Who?” She asks quietly.

‘ _That group at the bottom of the stairs. I’m cracking their encryption now—they’re talking about putting their names in for some kind of big match and picking up bounties for extra payout._ ’

So, there it is. She’s not sure what exactly she’s planning, but at least she’s got _something_. She continues descending the stairs as though nothing had happened and steps past the group Glyph had pointed out. “Back out before one of their ghosts catches you.”

‘ _Already did. You want me to tag them?_ ’

Her brow furrows. “Yeah. I’m gonna follow ‘em.”

Another blip, this time of disapproval. _‘What exactly do you plan to do?_ ’

She shrugs as though Glyph can see it, though it probably feels the motion without the visual, and crosses the floor of the hangar, weaving around techs organizing newly delivered equipment and supplies and heading for the station Amanda had set up shop in.

She holds her breath and forces her eyes forward as she passes another one, this one decorated with maps and littered with knives and partially disassembled handguns.

A plan isn’t something she’s got the energy to come up with at this point in time—this is just a spur of the moment fixation, a way for her to do something, _anything_ that isn’t wallow in the light she had lost.

Amanda’s face brightens when she spots Quinn heading for her; Quinn has to stifle a brief flash of despair that she has no idea her best friend is dead. She probably shouldn’t have bothered, because she then has to bite down on a swell of indiscriminate rage instead. It isn’t right of them to keep Cayde’s death quiet, to wait for the _right time_.

There is no ‘right time’ to acknowledge or deal with death, and keeping someone from grieving a loss of a loved one is despicable.

Her and Amanda strike up a conversation over a partially disassembled sparrow, talking about everything from the upcoming Festival of the Lost (her stomach twists at the thought of officially saying goodbye) to the Sparrow Racing League she’s in talks with Zavala to strike up again now that the City had been reclaimed.

When the group of guardians Glyph had indicated turns to leave, Quinn excuses herself and tells Amanda she’ll stop by again another time, and then follows.

She keeps her distance, shadowing them as they make their way through and breaking off as they do, stopping at different shops in the main plaza and striking up her first conversations in weeks to waive suspicion should the guardians notice her. Even Banshee, for all the old exo’s memory problems, had noticed her scarcity and is surprised when she stops by and says hello.

She feels a spark of guilt about that considering she’s only using him as a means to an end for her ultimate objective.

Which…is _what_ , exactly?

It isn’t like she has enough authority to just _shut down_ an illegal operation herself, and she isn’t feeling particularly endeared to Zavala to blow the whistle to him or Ikora. Shaxx, maybe, but he had discouraged a hunt for Uldren as well, and she rules him out.

She’ll figure it out as she goes.

‘ _There_ ,’ Glyph finally says as they pass a corner nestled between the corridor she had just stepped out from and an open-air restaurant with a few patrons sitting and chatting with the owner, ‘ _their signatures disappeared in there_.’

“ _’Disappeared_ ’?” She asks, making her way over to the restaurant and taking a seat. She flags down the owner for some coffee to ward off the deeper chill descending on the Tower with the falling sun while she waits.

‘ _Yes. It’s…_ ’ Glyph is silent for several seconds and then lets out a stream of beeping and blips that Quinn thinks almost sounds like the ghost’s version of swearing a blue streak. If her heart wasn’t feeling so heavy, she might have found it amusing. ‘ _How have Ikora and Zavala not picked up on this? It’s some sort of light-cloaking field. It’s like nothing is there at all!_ ’

Leaning back slightly as the owner sets a mug of coffee in front of her, Quinn eyes the corner and notices an alley, almost hidden between hung banners and overgrown plants and stacked crates and supplies. Now that she’s looking closer, she can see some sort of wrought-iron gate blocking the alley itself.

How had they entered it? Usually blocked areas in the Tower required specific passcodes from one of the Vanguard’s ghosts.

She turns back to her coffee and sips at it gingerly. “Maybe it’s discreet enough they haven’t noticed.” She speculates, ignoring the strange looks she receives from the civilians sitting next to her; apparently they’re not used to guardians that speak to their ghosts when they’re intangible. “That’s probably the point.”

The group she had followed reappears shortly after initially disappearing and heads out into the bazaar, then makes the turn to leave through the courtyard and main plaza.

She waits until she’s finished with her coffee a little over fifteen minutes later before heading for the alley, Glyph materializing briefly to transfer glimmer to the restaurant owner for it. No one pays her any mind as she slips between the stacked crates and under draped banners and decorative string lights.

The gate she had noticed earlier is only partially closed, and there’s some sort of thin, green banner roped through the bars. Her eyes narrow at it before she ducks down under the gate and into the darkened alley beyond; an exceptionally dim running light is strung in the edge where the floor meets the wall, and it leads the way farther in, turning down a corner she can just barely see.

Against the better judgement she feels as though she lost weeks ago, she follows it.

Glyph points out when they pass into that cloaking field it had mentioned, but Quinn feels no difference in either the air or the energy around her. She wonders if the difference is because of the divide between her and her fellow guardians, or if it’s part of the field being so discreet it goes unnoticed despite being next door to the bazaar Ikora regularly spends time in for fresh air and perspective.

After turning the corner the light leads her around, it takes her a fair distance farther down before the alley begins to lighten up more; she can see another corner up ahead where a brighter light originates from. Her pace slows as she approaches it and steps cautiously into the new light.

She’s not sure what, exactly, she had been expecting, but it’s still just an alley, albeit one that's occupied. There are stacks of crates, supplies, haphazard piles of machinery and what look like trophies—the helmet of a Fallen captain, a scorch cannon, Cabal flak rifles, and what even looks like a dismembered Vex arm poking out of a crate settled on the floor next to a pair of booted feet.

Blinking, Quinn lifts her eyes away from the various things stashed with no apparent care for consistency and up to the man standing in the center of the organized chaos.

He’s leaning awkwardly, one gauntleted arm thrown out to one side, as though to block something he’s standing in front of. He’s watching her through narrowed eyes, though there’s a friendly smile on his face framed by a short, dark beard and scars on his jaw. His hair is short, and a dark cloth band is wrapped around his head.

Green seems to be his favorite color, between the banner on the gate outside, the large ones draped from the ceiling behind him, and the earth-green getup he wears. His clothes remind her of the robes warlocks wear—was he a warlock, or does he just like the style? Fur pauldrons rest on his shoulders, and the gauntlets on his forearms look as though they’d seen better days, scratched paint and what even looks like rope twined around them.

There’s a gun tucked into the thick belt around his waist, and some kind of green pendant featuring two coiled snakes dangles from a string around his neck.

Quinn meets his eyes and immediately decides she doesn’t trust him _or_ the easy smile still on his face. Her instincts where people were concerned are usually a dead aim, but she’s unable to pick up on _anything_ behind a friendly demeanor that doesn’t feel quite right. At the same time, she feels like the longer they size each other up, he’s flipping through her like she’s his longtime favorite library book.

He finally shifts, leaning away from whatever he had been trying to keep hidden and gesturing in her direction. “Think I recognize you, sister—you’re Cayde’s lady, aren’t you?” He asks, voice somehow both a honey-smooth twang and a gravelly rasp that slithers up her spine like ghostly cold fingers.

“Am I that recognizable?” She asks, brow furrowing. Sure, she and Cayde had never hidden how they felt about each other, especially after the fall of the City, but romantic entanglements weren’t really paid much attention to in the Tower, most guardians more preoccupied with their fight against the forces plaguing humanity.

“Ah, ol’ Drifter sees a lot. Hears a lot more. You and him? Real sweet. Shame he ain’t around anymore, gotta admit the guy deserved a bit of happy, all he’d been through.”

Her blood ices over at the statement, suspicion and distrust spiking—how does he know? How does he know when everyone else has no idea? _None_ of the Vanguard’s inner circle would have revealed the secret, and even the resident motormouth of her fireteam wouldn’t have. “Who are you?”

Not once has his smile broken, and Quinn hates that she can’t figure him out. Her eyes briefly follow as his hand dips into a pocket on his waist and he pulls out a coin—again, _green_ —flipping it idly between his fingers and rolling it over his knuckles as he watches her in turn. “Call me the Drifter. A name ain’t what you’re here for, though, is it?”

The way he asks the question implies he already knows what she’s here for—despite the fact that even _she_ doesn’t know what she’s here for. Curiosity? Distrust? That much is a given; is he the one organizing this _Gambit_ she keeps hearing about? Or is he just someone running dirt under the Vanguard’s nose? Are the guardians she had followed accomplices?

What is going _on_? And who _is_ he? In the years she’d spent in the City and the Tower since waking up, she’s never once seen him, not until right now.

‘ _He’s a guardian_.’ Glyph tells her, voice a whisper despite it speaking in her head. ‘ _But something feels…wrong_.’

She itches to ask Glyph what it meant by that, but she doesn’t trust talking to it with this… _Drifter_ in earshot.

Her eyes follow the coin as he continues fiddling with it, almost mesmerized by the fluid motions. He’s good with his hands, clearly. “What’s ‘Gambit’?” She finally asks, unsure of what else to say. She doesn’t want to admit she has no idea why she’d chased her leads here, much less that now that she _is_ here she’s still not sure what she intends to do about it.

His grin doesn’t falter—doesn’t his face get _tired_ smiling all the time?—but his motions stop, the coin disappearing somewhere into his sleeve with a deft motion of his hand. “Last I checked, it meant some type‘a play to get an edge.”

A light rush of irritation rolls through her. “I didn’t ask for a definition. It’s some kind of competition I keep hearing about.”

“Should'a specified, darlin’.” He replies easily, brushing off her aggravated tone as though it isn’t even there. “I got no clue about any ‘Gambit’. Dunno where you heard it, but I got nothin' to do with it.”

Her skin bristles at the use of the pet name; she _hates_ them, and Cayde had been the only one she’d ever let use one to refer to her. She swallows down a kneejerk reaction to say as much, but the slight uptick of Drifter’s lips tells her he probably picked up on body language that spoke the same words she hadn’t said aloud. “Are you sure about that? Because I followed a few people talking about putting their names in for a big match and some payout back here.”

“Maybe they were headin’ a different way,” he mimics her, crossing his arms over his chest, and she can’t decide if it’s meant to be mocking or not. “Can’t a guy prefer workin’ away from all the noise out there?”

“Not in conspicuously dark alleys hidden behind a whole bunch of junk.”

He laughs at the sarcastic observation and nods, gesturing idly in acknowledgement. “Fair enough, fair enough. Promise, I ain’t up to anythin’ bad. Just doin’ a bit of…discreet work for the Vanguard. Cayde, specifically.”

Her eyes narrow. Ikora’s Hidden do discreet work for her, but none of them hide in dark alleys with a bunch of equipment and weaponry that look like centuries-old designs. Quinn had even spoken to a few of them working out in the open, and met with a few out in the field on assignments. Is he name-dropping Cayde just to put her at ease, since he knows her connection to him?

“Uh-huh. Is Gambit a part of that ‘discreet work’?” She pours as much blatant skepticism into her words as she can—he can play games, but so can she. Question is, can she play them at his level? Cayde had taught her how to play poker, and this guy has one _hell_ of a poker face. She can’t even begin to tell what cards he has on the table, to the point she isn’t sure he's playing at all.  “I keep hearing about it, and it doesn’t seem to be something anyone wants to—or is _supposed_ to—talk about in the open. Why the secret?”

“Couldn’t begin to guess. But I’m gonna humor you, sister,” he says, and she feels his eyes on her back as she boldly steps around him to eye the handful of guns lined up against the wall, “say I am the guy runnin’ this ‘gambit’ business. If I’m keepin’ it close to the chest, I imagine I couldn’t go ‘round talkin’ about it with just _anyone_. Why’re you so interested?”

She takes a moment to admit that the guns he's holding onto look damn nice and wonder how they handle before turning around to face him again, fighting to keep her face neutral; she’d never won a game of poker against Cayde, and he’d joked almost constantly about the fact she couldn’t hold her tells to save her life. “ _You know I love you wearin’ your heart on your sleeve, sunshine,”_ he’d say, “ _but you’re down a few thousand glimmer and I’m startin’ to feel bad._ ”

She doubts this guy would feel half as bad about playing her under the table.

No answer comes to her, both because she doesn’t trust herself to keep her cards hidden and because she still doesn’t _know_ why she’s interested. It’s a fixation. A distraction, if only a brief one. It’s something shady, something under Zavala and Ikora’s noses.

Her eyes drop to the side and her brow furrows at the thought.

Is that what her interest is? Is she pissed off enough at Zavala forbidding her and her team from hunting Uldren to participate in and hide something unsanctioned just to spite him?

If that's the case, then why doesn’t she just cut ties, hijack a ship, say damn the Vanguard and the City, and track Uldren down anyway?

Because she feels indebted to people that gave her stability while her foundation was crumbling, gave her the home she imagines she lost, long ago? Or maybe she's aware of the fact that Zavala is _right_ —the City can’t afford another war so soon on the heels of the Red Legion’s, and even the smallest percentage of chance is too much to risk. She's just so lost in grief she's trying to ignore it.

She can feel the rage burning just under her skin at the thought of Uldren, feels the restlessness prickling at the edges of her senses; she needs to get it out of her system before she does something stupid.

Like punch Zavala in the nose, which she's already tempted to do.

“Lemme ask a different way: what is it you _want_? Money? Reputation? A good _fight_?”

The last option strikes a chord in her and her eyes snap back up to meet his. Glyph chirps in warning, and she can feel without its input how dark her expression had gotten. How full of anger and hate her eyes are.

Does she want a fight? No. She wants Uldren fucking _dead,_ and that want is leaving her drifting and unsure, apart from her fellow guardians, something black coiling around her mind like the snakes in this man’s pendant. She wants Uldren’s blood for taking yet _something else_ from her after she’s already lost so much, but she can’t, and being kept from that is eating her from the inside. What she wants is a way to burn that away before it can consume her.

The longer he stares into her eyes, the wider his grin grows. “Alright, _alright_ ,” he says, voice slower and smoother than before. Seductive, almost. She wonders if it’s intentional. With a flick of his wrist, that coin he’d been fiddling with before is in his hand again, and he flips it over to her.

She catches it, turning it over in her fingers with a furrowed brow. “Is this supposed to mean something?” She asks, thumbing the emblem engraved into the coin; it's a mirror of the pendant he wears. Between it, the pendant, and the banners behind him, she wonders what the significance is. Maybe just an aesthetic.

Snakes. Not very trustworthy creatures, if fables Quinn had read from pre-Collapse archives are anything to go by.

“Ha! Maybe. Your ghost should figure it out. Lookin’ forward to seein’ you again.” Is all he says with a shrug, stepping back over to his equipment in a clear dismissal.

Quinn stares at him for another moment, the smooth coin warming between her fingers. Glyph is quiet. _She’s_ confused. Interested, off-balance, and confused all at once. What the hell had just happened? Who _is_ this guy?

‘Drifter’ doesn’t exactly give her much to work with.

She’s still standing there dumbly when he looks back over at her and grins again, both wicked and amused. Her back straightens and she immediately turns and beats a hasty retreat, that smile raking up her spine just as easily as his voice had before.

She isn’t sure how to feel about that, tacking just one more bullet onto the thus far incomprehensive list of ‘ _what the fuck_ ’ that meeting had left her with.

The fresh, cold air back out in the bazaar does nothing to aid in the effort to help her decide whether or not her momentary fixation had wound up turning into a good or a bad thing. She still has no intention of blabbing to the Vanguard or their immediate confidantes, but…

She glances down at the coin in her palm again and squints at it as though it would give her the answer, but it just shimmers in the dimming twilight innocently.

Someone walks by and she instinctively curls her fingers around it, glancing around quickly before pocketing it and heading for the apartment block. She isn’t sure if she relishes the idea of being in her team’s shared living space at the moment, but the only other option she has is Cayde’s place.

She _definitely_ doesn't want to be alone there.

Strangely, though usually she’d happily play the petty bitch and just try to figure out the secret to the token the Drifter had given her out in the open where she's obviously not _supposed_ to, she’s already decided to head to her own room, lock it down, and let Glyph pick it apart away from prying eyes.

She tells herself it has little to do with the potential promise of blowing off steam and entirely to do with her wanting to know what she's getting into before blowing the whistle to…someone.

That's the root of her problems, again. She has no idea what she's doing anymore. The rest of her team is still out taking the fight to the forces that would joyfully see them all exterminated, and she can't even say for sure that, should Zavala lift her house arrest, she'd want to do the same thing.

She’s going stir-crazy. It’s definitely not helping curb her anger.

 _So get a fucking day job_ , she thinks to herself bitterly as the door to the team apartment slides open and she steps inside.

“Hey! You’re back just in time,” Nyx greets her with a wave from across the room, standing in front of a flat screen that her ghost is hovering near. Her jaw lights flash in a pattern Quinn recognizes as cautiously warm and welcoming, and she feels her chest tighten. “I managed to dig up some old movie things from _way_ back in the Golden Age. We were gonna watch some.”

“ _You_ dug them up?” Her ghost, Kessler, beeps at her in aggravation, his shell twirling as he works on transferring data to the screen’s system. “Sure, take all the credit.”

Nyx lets out a soft _pfft_ at her ghost’s crotchety response, face plates pinching into an amused scrunch. “Grouch.”

Once again, Quinn finds herself wishing she was in the kind of mood to find the banter amusing. Glyph materializes next to her and blips consolingly, but it does nothing to lift her mood.

Luke’s head and shoulders pop out from around the corner leading into the apartment’s kitchen, and he beams at her, causing her mood to drop even further conversely. “It’s gonna be so bad. I can’t wait.”

“You don’t even know what Golden Age movies were _like_ , Luke.” Nyx responds.

“So?” He says. “They’re old.”

“You gonna say that about your music?”

“ _Hey_! Zepplin is a _classic_.”

“Yeah,” Nyx replies, deliberately slow, “because it’s _old_.”

Exhaling through her nose and closing her eyes, Quinn tunes Luke’s indignant response out and moves past them. Halfway down the hall to her room she nearly runs face-first into Kel as he steps out of his own room, and she swears under her breath. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He says. He’s looking down at her in a very patented _Kel_ way, intense and yet completely unreadable. If it wasn't for the fact she's used to dealing with Kel’s consistent nature of being aloof and distant and hard to read—both before _and_ after he had started showing his face to his teammates—she’d be more irritated at her instincts once again failing to do her any favors. 

He watches her for a moment, brow furrowing as he, like the Drifter before, reads her like a book. “Don’t let yourself get lost.” He says, finally.

She blinks at the statement, watching as he steps around her.

Classic Kel.

For once, his strange, distant way of showing he cares doesn't feel endearing. Instead, she just feels frustrated. She’s _already_ lost, and all things considered _he_ should know what she’s going through better than anyone twice over, considering how she’d heard he’d responded to Gil’s death years ago.

As she opens her door, she hears Luke protest Kel leaving the apartment without watching a movie with them. Kel mumbles something noncommittal in response, and the front door slides shut shortly thereafter. She wonders if Zavala had asked for his input again in directing the City’s hunters, as he had been doing frequently—apparently Shiro-4 had declined giving up fieldwork, no one could get in touch with Marcus Ren, and Kel is the next closest hunter with seniority in the Tower.

And Cayde hadn’t ever told Zavala and Ikora what his Dare had been, or if he’d ever even decided on one, so they had to make do.

Something dark and ugly twists her stomach at the thought. She wishes the doors weren’t automated for ghost access—she wants to slam hers shut, childish as the desire is.

She drops down onto her bed heavily and runs her fingers through her hair, digging them into her scalp until it stings, and desperately wills the despair and boiling rage at war in her chest to go _away_.

“Are you…sure you don’t want to watch a movie with the others?” Glyph asks her quietly, flitting down into her line of sight, the facets of its shell twisting around its center orb. It’s even more worried than it was before.

Quinn almost laughs thinking about how much more worried Glyph would be if it saw what she's like when she _actually_ gets mad; though she’s not exactly sure, herself, but she knows in her gut that ‘ugly’ is a tame way to describe what she becomes when truly enraged and upset. “I’m sure.” She wouldn’t be able to enjoy it anyhow, no matter how nice the thought sounds.

Glyph doesn’t respond.

She stands, reaching into her pocket to retrieve the jade coin she’d gotten from the Drifter and setting it almost gingerly on the stand next to her bed. “Think you can figure that out?” She asks, eager to shift the subject away from socialization as she steps away and reaches for the zipper of her jacket.

“Giving the ghost version of a huff, Glyph drifts over to it and its facets whirl around with activity, a probing beam of light striking the coin as it gets to work. “I don’t know if there’s much to figure out,” it replies, “it’s a coin made out of a material that’s been rare ever since the Collapse.”

“Jade.”

She can feel Glyph blink up at her with surprise. “How’d you know?”

Her mouth opens to answer, motions halting as it occurs to her that she, again, isn’t _sure_. Seems she’s not sure of a lot these days save for wanting Uldren Sov’s head on a pike. “I…think there may have been some of it where I came from, too.” She finally says, hesitantly. Her coat slips from her shoulders and she tosses it haphazardly over the foot board of her bed.

She remembers so little of her life before waking up from stasis here. While it isn't exactly uncommon (and, in fact, is the norm) for guardians to not remember their first life, the particular way she woke into this world and the stark difference between her light-given abilities from her peers make it stand out a bit more. The significance of that sudden knowledge doesn’t slip past her.

She should probably tell Ikora—but that would require divulging how, exactly, she came to that little morsel of a clue, which she has no plans to do before she finally finds out what the deal is with this Drifter guy.

Her ghost doesn’t say anything to that, but she can hear the thin _fweem_ as it goes back to work on the coin. She’s down to the tank top she wore under her coat and armor and her underwear before she finally hears a noise of success from her ghost.

“This is _amazing_ ,” it says, its facets flitting about wildly in excitement when she turns around and makes her way back over to take a seat on the bed, “it looks like it’s just a coin made out of a gemstone, but it’s actually a compact encryption key _and_ transponder encased in the gemstone. All in one! Do you think he made them himself?”

She picks the coin up and stares at it, thumbing the emblem again and furrowing her brow. Gesturing idly, she shrugs her confusion and declines to offer her opinion on its question. “Which means what?”

A pause. “I, uh. I don’t know.”

This actually startles a choked laugh out of her, and the reaction results in an energized ghost. She’s sure that if Glyph were capable of it, it’d be beaming at her. “Well,” she says, “so much for ‘your ghost should figure it out’.”

“Hey! I _did_ figure it out!”

Her eyebrow lifts.

It blinks, facets withdrawing around its core almost bashfully. “I mean, sort of. Look, the point is whatever he gave it to us for, we’ll just have to wait until we get a signal from it to find out for _real_.”

The coin twists and flips in her fingers as she thinks before she realizes that she’s fidgeting—at least it isn’t braiding her hair, but she’s always hated displaying her anxieties so openly. Pursing her lips, she holds the coin out. “You should probably hang onto it, then. I won’t be able to tell when it gets one.”

“Good point.” It says, hitting the coin with another flash of light and dematting it into whatever light-fueled pocket dimension ghosts have access to. It looks at her long and hard, then, and she squints back at it. As she’s about to ask what the look is for it cuts her off. “Are you sure you want to do this? We could—we could just tell Zavala. Or Ikora. You’re still friends with Ikora, right?”

Whatever shift in her expression occurs, it causes Glyph to recoil from her, and she feels terrible. Her face drops to her hands and she takes a deep breath to calm herself. “Sorry,” she says. She feels like she needs to say more, but the words won’t come and so she sits there on her bed stupidly, her gaze going long and distant.

“You know, spending time with the team might be good for you.” Glyph says softly.

Silently, she agrees, but while she _does_ want to spend time with her team, she also really doesn’t. In spite of the fact she hadn’t done much that day—meeting with the Drifter being the only moment that truly stuck out, strange as it was—she's exhausted. Glancing to her side where a clock is projected above the surface of her nightstand, she notes blankly that it’s barely past sundown. 

Shifting, she settles onto her bed and pulls the covers over herself, rolling so her back is to Glyph. “You can go ahead and watch the movie if you want, Glyph. I’ll be okay.”

The room is quiet, but she eventually hears the hiss of her door opening and then clicking shut as Glyph leaves her alone with the silence.


	2. pigeon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> n. (in gambling) someone new to the game; someone who may be generally considered unsophisticated, naïve, or ‘easy prey’ by more experienced gamblers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited 6/10/2019

For the first time in weeks Quinn finds herself filled with more restless energy than the aimless numb she’s felt since returning from the Reef.

It isn’t nearly enough to beat out the energy by wandering the same Tower scenery she’s been stumbling about within already; in the few days since meeting the Drifter she’d already walked the main plazas and what areas aren’t restricted to working personnel only three times over, and so she makes her way down to the City to expand her wandering there.

It’s around noon when she steps off the elevator on the ground floor, making her way through the Tower’s logistics and out into the sunlit streets of a City still rebuilding in the wake of the war they’d won.

Everything is slowly returning to normal for everyone else—colorful banners and paints are going back up, open shops and stalls are attracting business, and as she walks a pair of kids run by giggling, chasing after a colorful ball.

Inexplicably, she swears she’s seen a ball like that show up in the Tower before. Probably some of the hunters trying to fry Zavala’s last nerve in an attempt to get him to lighten up.

She’s pretty sure Mercury would sooner freeze over.

In her five years since joining the guardians in the Tower she’s seen more of the City and visited it more frequently than ever before in recent days, and while she still doesn’t know the paths and streets nearly as well as she knows every inch of the Hub, there are still a few places she recognizes, a few paths that she knows and follows with idle steps until Glyph guides her back into the main thoroughfares.

She appreciates the effort it’s putting into keep her from focusing on things she doesn’t want to focus on.

Thankfully, the wait for whatever purpose the jade coin she’d received from the Drifter served is doing a well enough job on its own, which is why she's now _killing time_ rather than just wasting it.

She’d rather be spending it by seeking vengeance, but, well—beggars can’t be choosers. At least she’s looking forward to _something_ , right? That has to be a step in the right direction.

“Quinn!”

Her footsteps halt at the sound of her own name on the air and she wheels around, struggling to catch sight of whoever was calling her name considering she's nearly a head shorter than everyone else around even _with_ the modest wedges on her boots. The voice sounds familiar.

“Quinn!!” The voice—younger and feminine—calls to her again, louder this time. “Over here!”

Finally she catches sight of a sign she recognizes and she has to fight to keep her heart from sinking. _The Tipsy Sparrow—_ a modest little bar located near the base of the original Vanguard Tower, owned and operated by a crotchety old Titan named Darin-8 that had retired some years back after his ghost was destroyed. An old friend of Cayde’s.

Along with plenty of other guardians. The bar certainly hasn’t ever had a shortage of crowds in the time since Cayde had first taken her there.

It had been their favorite haunt whenever he had managed to slip away from Vanguard duties.

She stares up at the weakly flickering neon sign hanging above the bar’s entrance; the place must have taken some kind of a hit in the Red Legion assault and is still a work in progress considering Darin had once hauled Cayde up by the cloak and carried him back outside just for tracking rain-muddied boot prints into the bar. She can't ever see him tolerating his place looking like it is at the moment.

A quick blink as she realizes she’d stopped for a reason and Quinn refocuses on the person that had called her name, finding Leilani standing on the landing of the bar in a warm overcoat, brightly smiling and waving her over. Nikon, Quinn's fireteam leader, treats Leilani like a little sister—consequently, the girl had promptly adopted the entire rest of the fireteam as her _own_ older siblings regardless of their thoughts on the matter.

Quinn had almost forgotten that Cayde had gotten her the job here after she’d showed up in the Tower with a near-dead Nikon after their home outside the walls had been invaded and razed to the ground.

Swallowing down the sudden stone in her throat she crosses the street in Leilani’s direction, definitely not ready for more conversation, let alone the kind of endlessly optimistic ones Leilani had become well-known for, but not at all willing to snub her. Breaking the girl’s heart or hurting her in any way seemed tantamount to sacrilegious.

Even after losing her home, everyone she’d known since she was a child, and nearly losing her guardian, her spirit is as infallible as Luke’s is, and Quinn envies that. While she isn’t—or _hadn’t been_ —shy with her own positive attitude, she's willing to admit she’d been decidedly more cynical than she imagines she once was before coming out of stasis.

Quinn isn’t going to be the reason Leilani loses that stride.

“I haven’t seen you in a while!” Leilani says as she approaches, briefly adjusting the thick scarf around her neck and stuffing her hands in her jacket pockets. Her shift must not have started if she's still wearing both, and judging by the visible flush on her darker skin, she’d arrived early. “Nik said you’d been feeling a bit down, though, so I understand.”

‘A bit down’ is an understatement, but she doesn’t imagine Nikon wants to go around speaking on her behalf, much less when she’s willing to admit that she’s never felt _this_ down in any of the years she’s been active in this world. “It’s been…rough, yeah.”

“Tough missions? Everyone says the war’s done and we’re all safe, but I doubt beating the Red Legion stopped any of the other assholes that want us wiped out. Seems like guardians’ jobs are never done, huh?” She bounces on her heels, eyes going to the sky and narrowing at the slowly growing cloud cover.

“It’s mostly housekeeping.” Quinn replies, unable to keep the bitterness out of her tone as she thinks again of the Prison of Elders. _That_ had been a simple housekeeping mission, and look what happened.

Leilani, observant as she is, picks up on it and turns her narrowed gaze over her. “That’s a good thing, right? Means we’re winning.”

“That kind of thinking is dangerous, ‘Lani.” Both Quinn and the younger girl turn at the new voice, the lilted accent announcing Nikon before they even see him. The Titan steps up to them and crosses his arms, leather jacket creaking with the motion. It's always odd seeing him out of his armor, though not even the lighter clothes can do much to diminish just how _big_ he is.

Leilani sticks her tongue out at his chastisement but doesn’t argue the point. “I’m just saying, it’d be nice to imagine we’ve got the bad guys running for once.”

“It’s not as simple as ‘good’ versus ‘bad’, and you know that.”

Nikon’s ghost—Ion—materializes over his shoulder, white and red facets sparkling in the afternoon sun; a moment later Glyph appears as well, and both of them flit off to the side, holding a conversation of their own in light chirps and beeps.

Her brow furrows, watching them and wondering if it’s only her that can’t understand them, considering Glyph isn’t by traditional definition, _her_ ghost. She can’t recall if she’s ever heard another guardian cut into a ghost’s conversation as though they understood the little creatures’ language just fine.

“Quinn.”

Her focus returns to her present company and she looks up at Nik, not sure if she should feel apologetic for the lapse in attention since he's well aware of the current state of her mental health. He looks concerned—as well as like he’s trying very hard _not_ to look concerned in an attempt to keep Leilani from questioning her moodiness too much. “What?”

“How are you?” He asks, patiently.

Mouth opening, she starts to say she’s doing _just fine_ , but notices both Glyph and Ion staring at her and she quickly rethinks the blatant lie. “I’m…tired.” Is what she says, instead. It’s not a lie, in any case, but it certainly doesn’t do a good job at even scratching the surface.

Nik doesn’t miss the quick redirect but he opts to not comment on it, glancing at Leilani and frowning at the way she's squinting at Quinn. “Take the time you need,” he says, “I’ll talk to Zavala about getting you back into active duty once you’re feeling better.”

She stifles a bitter laugh; good relations with Zavala or not, Quinn’s not sure that Zavala is bound to rescind her grounding anytime soon, not the least reason being the kind of _un_ kind things she’d spat at him after he’d forbidden retaliation against Uldren.

Nikon had had to physically haul her out of the room and it had taken him reminding her, in that sometimes infuriatingly patient way he's so good at, that Zavala cared as much about losing Cayde as the rest of them. It had ebbed her fury enough to drop it, but she still hadn’t gone back in to say her final goodbye to Cayde until Zavala had left.

She’d never been on the greatest terms with him, her sense of humor and general risk-taking, impulsive attitude clashing with his no-nonsense one far too much to allow anything but a distant working relationship to form, but she’s never actively despised the man until now.

“I appreciate it, Nik.” She says after a thick silence.

Leilani glances between the two of them, clearly aware that _something_ is up and trying to figure out if she should dig her fingers into the muck to find out what it is. Girl is way too smart for her own good, sometimes. All Quinn can hope is that Nikon won’t cave in if she does push for answers with how wrapped around her fingers he is.

Eventually, Leilani shrugs, and a beaming grin that threatens to improve Quinn’s mood all on its own replaces the suspicious look in her eyes. “Well, whatever’s going on, you and Cayde need to stop down here again soon. It’s been a while since Darin and I have seen either of you.”

Whatever warmth Quinn had begun to feel washes away with a sudden rising tide. The ill feeling of cold numbness returns.

Nikon grimaces, lifting a hand to scratch at his beard in discomfort. “We’re gonna let you get ready for work, ‘Lani. We’ve got mission stuff to go over.” He smiles when she blows raspberries at him, reaching over and ruffling her straight, black hair as he steps past her, off the patio and into the street with Ion flitting after him. “You’re almost twenty-two,” he calls back over his shoulder, “act like it!”

“You don’t age, you don’t get a say!” She calls back with a laugh, smiling at Quinn one more time and waving, telling her a quick _goodbye_ and _come visit again soon_ before heading into the bar.

Quinn follows after Nikon only after she realizes he’s standing in the street waiting for her.

After that discussion, she’s filled up her social quota for the day. She had been hoping he’d just been saying they had things to discuss as a way for her to back out and get away from the painful reminder of what she had lost. “Not really many things mission-wise to talk about, boss,” she says, her voice empty even to her own ears, “I’m pretty sure I’m still grounded.”

“You’re not yourself right now, Quinn,” He says as they walk, stepping around civilians and easily clearing a path through the crowds; most people just move out of his way anyway between his height and general commanding presence. “You’re in pain, and no one can fault you for that. But it’s not giving you the most rational mind.”

“I’m perfectly fucking rational.” She mutters, trailing slightly behind Nikon to let him do the work of path finding.

Glyph, of course, chooses that moment to interject its own thoughts. “You really aren’t. I still think we should tell—”

“Glyph, don’t.”

“Tell what?” Nik asks, stopping abruptly and nearly causing her to bump into him. His tone isn’t sharp, but there’s an edge to it that still makes her wince. When she looks away from Glyph she sees him watching her with a careful expression. Focused and guarded and calculating all at once.

Nikon may be more of a lax, charismatic kind of leader than Gil, but he's no less a leader—and right now, he's trying to make an assessment on how much of a problem one of his team members is going to be.

Or, worse, how much of a threat.

She swallows thickly at the thought. She’d never intentionally harm her team or the City, but maybe that's the problem. _Intention_.

She shakes her head and fights the wave of exhaustion at war with her frustration and laments the loss of the simple, easy to deal with restlessness she’d still be feeling if she hadn’t run into Nik and Leilani. “I’m just getting stir-crazy, Nik. Being stuck here is leaving me time to _think_ , and…”

She trails off with a vague, aggravated gesture, but Nikon understands her meaning. “Thinking isn’t something you want right now.”

“I need to be _doing_ something.” She confirms, but again wonders if doing Vanguard housecleaning is the kind of something that would help.

“I can’t vouch for you getting back into fieldwork when you’re still all over the place like this.”

“I’m not—” Her mouth closes before she can let the indignant response leave; her agitation isn’t on Nikon, and he, like the rest of her team, like Glyph, doesn’t deserve having the furious storm inside her head turned on him. Fishing for words for a handful of moments, she eventually lifts her arms in an angry shrug. “I don’t know what I’m asking for, Nik, I just know doing nothing but sitting around and _dwelling_ on it…it’s not helping.”

He doesn’t respond. How can he when he knows as well as she does that nothing is going to help her until she can figure out how to help herself? She's lost in a storm of herself without a rudder, stuck between a rock and a hard place, head versus heart, grief and anger at war and tearing her in two different directions.

A part of her _wants_ to accept what happened, put Uldren from her mind and move on, and she knows that’s what she _should_ do because she knows damn well that Zavala’s fears are founded—but it's the very silent minority compared to the other part that's screaming for retribution. Where the hell does she find balance between those two? 

She can't pick one without abandoning the other, and she knows she isn't in any place to be able to reconcile that decision.

Exhaling heavily, Quinn moves forward, running her fingers through her hair and then continuing on past him. “Maybe Hawthorne can tell me of a few holes in the wall to slip through.” Her tone is dry.

“ _Quinn_.”

She doesn’t stop to acknowledge whatever discouragement he wanted to give her. “I _know_ , Nik.”

Glyph drifts along over her shoulder quietly, but it hadn’t ever been very good at holding its thoughts in for too long and Quinn isn’t surprised when it does speak up. “You really shouldn’t be shutting your team out like this.”

“I’m not shutting them out.” She says.

“Sure,” It replies, synthesized voice as dry as her own had been a moment ago, “that’s why you’re spending most of your time hiding, avoiding the apartment, sleeping, or making sure any conversations last less than fifteen minutes. And now—and _now_ —you’re keeping secrets and planning on participating in something _illegal_!”

The latter half of its statement is nearly a hiss. She doesn’t respond.

Undeterred, Glyph speeds up to dart right in front of her face and force her to stop walking, facets twirling and shifting wildly as it spoke; for such a tiny creature, it can be terribly expressive. “Look, I’m not saying you can’t be upset or angry, but Nik is _right_. You’re not thinking clearly! Cayde wouldn’t want you to—”

Something black grips at her chest and she struggles to smother it before unleashing it full force on Glyph. Expression pinching, Quinn reaches up and with careful restraint gently pushes Glyph aside so she can continue walking. “I’m not your guardian, Glyph. If you don’t like what I’m doing, you’re free to _leave_.”

She regrets the statement the moment it leaves her mouth, able to feel how much it hurts Glyph without even having to see its reaction. Maybe, despite the fact she had never been risen by it and it isn’t technically her ghost, spending so much time with it merged with her light and performing as hers anyway had formed a semi-typical symbiotic relationship.

Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe Glyph _can_ feel what she's feeling, if the reverse is true.

It doesn’t speak after that, silently dematting and merging with her light.

And now she feels awful. _Again_. And it’s her own damned fault.

In the span of a few hours she’s gone from waking from a restless sleep to wandering restlessly, despairing at memories she hadn’t expected to surface thanks to her idle feet, frustration, and now _this_ : self-loathing at its most vitriolic.

She’d never expected to understand the metaphor of a rain cloud hovering over someone during poor moods, but right then she understood it perfectly, and her rain cloud is a gale of emotions leaving her holding on for dear life.

It’s barely three in the afternoon and Quinn already wants to just go back to bed.

Her poor mood is so pervasive that many of the people around avoid her as she continues her meandering. She’s left hoping desperately that whatever signal that jade coin was supposed to get came through _soon_ , because though she’s looking frantically for some kind of distraction in the City she’s failing miserably.

Something small and solid materializes in the palm of her hand and nearly startles her out of her steady pace, and when she lifts it up and opens her hand she sees the very same coin sitting there. Glyph hadn’t said a word, still, but maybe it had anticipated the way the soft weight of the coin would ground her.

 _Stupid_.

Of all the things to root her emotions and steady her mood, it's a stupid piece of currency tied to some _weirdo_ she can't make heads or tails of and something unknown and potentially dangerous.

She lifts her eyes to the towering skyscrapers of the City as people move around her, idly thumbing the coin and twisting it within her palm. What is she _doing_? It's still a recurring question and she still doesn't have an answer to it.

Fuck, she hates feeling so lost.

“I’m sorry, Glyph.” She finally says, quietly, glancing down at the coin again before resuming her fruitless journeying. “More than that, I’m sorry I keep _needing_ to say sorry.”

She knows Glyph hears her, but it says nothing and remains silent all throughout the rest of her trip through the City, even choosing to ignore her when she asks for its help in finding her way back to the Tower.

Twilight descends by the time she manages to find a familiar landmark and veer herself in the correct direction, stepping into the dying bustle of regular Tower activity and heading for the elevator up to the Hub. Her fidgeting with the coin in her hand has been an all but permanent motion for nearly an hour and all she feels is miserable.

She steps off the elevator onto the rear deck of the Hub, between the main plaza and the hangar, and as she turns to head for the bazaar and attached apartment blocks Glyph finally chooses to speak up.

‘ _I’m getting an encrypted signal, sent to the transponder in the coin. It’s got some coordinates I guess we’re supposed to go to.’_ Its voice is completely devoid of its usual color.

Quinn hates herself for the way her initial, painful pang of regret is immediately swept away by the feeling of being re-energized, pushing away the bone-deep exhaustion her own emotional roller-coaster had left her with.

She turns on her heels and heads for the hangar instead.

“Where are they?” She asks, practically hopping down the steps into the hangar in her speed.

‘ _Looks like a geosynchronous orbit over Nessus_.’ Glyph responds, letting out a series of electronic blips. ‘ _That’s airspace owned by the Cabal. Usually guardian ships just slip through the network, in and out, no hovering. We don’t have anything that can fight their ships—nothing that Arach Jalaal is willing to spare, anyway._ ’

She opts not to muse on the subject; it’s possible that airspace wasn’t as airtight as it had been prior to Ghaul’s defeat, especially with the Vanguard’s continued decimation of Red Legion operations.

Her footsteps halt abruptly, eyes fixated on the Frame in control of Tower traffic. It's tapped into any Vanguard policies and general orders, which means…damn, she had almost forgotten Zavala had put a ground lock on her ship ident.

How does she get around that? _Can_ she get around that?

With an initially hesitant step Quinn changes course and heads for Amanda’s repair station, the same disassembled and in-progress sparrow from the other day hooked up and being worked on, sparks flying from its metal frame as Amanda welds a piece on.

Halfway there, she stops again.

Amanda and Zavala are decently close, now that she thinks about it; she’d heard a story at some point that Zavala had rescued her as a child. Whether the story is bullshit or not, it means a possibility that if she went through Amanda to get around her lockdown, it might get back to Zavala.

 _Damnit_.

The coin in her fingers twists rapidly as she thinks, then stills, two of her fingers curled around the coin and the other two lifting to tap at the earpiece she usually opts to wear rather than a helmet. “Glyph, can you comm Roland for me?”

‘ _What for?_ ’

“Please?”

Silence answers her, but after a pause Glyph gives her a beep of confirmation as the comm line comes to life.

“ _Yeah, what?”_ Roland says.

She pays no mind to the irritated tone of his voice; she's perhaps the only person on the team that he doesn't mind speaking to, given she's the only one that trusts him completely and isn’t, well, _Luke_ , so she knows it’s just his usual crabby demeanor. “Listen, can I ask a favor?”

A beat of silence. “ _What is it?_ ”

“I’m going stir-crazy, Roland,” she says, and though she’s leaving out the _real_ reason for why she’s asking, it is still a half-truth, “and Zavala’s got my ship on lockdown. Can I borrow yours to just… _go_ somewhere for a few hours?”

Another silence, this time long enough that her stomach twists with dejected anxiety.

“ _I’ll have Ghost_ _give you the flight key. Don’t get yourself killed, you hear me?_ _I want my ship back._ ” He says, finally, and she withholds her heavy exhale of relief. He sounds aggravated, but the demand is about as close to an indication that he gives a damn about her well-being as she's going to get.

“Thank you.” She replies, not even needing to fake the sincere gratitude in her voice. Even if she isn't about to find out what this _Gambit_ business is, just the ability to leave the City walls and _breathe_ for a while is enough for her.

“ _No problem_.” The line cuts off awkwardly after his response. He isn’t great at good-byes, but he's worse at heartfelt emotion.

Turning, Quinn moves for the traffic controller again. Glyph lets her know its got Roland’s flight key just as she reaches the Frame.

“Key, please.” It says automatically, fingers tapping out commands on the screen in front of it in rapid fire and optics not leaving the screen.

Glyph materializes long enough to transfer the data and then demats again; her words must have hurt it worse than she thought.

“Thank you.” The frame says blandly, reaching a hand up to tap in more commands on an adjacent screen quickly before returning to monitoring traffic feeds. “Bay D10. Have your ghost consult the directory if you need assistance finding your lift pad. Please allow up to ten minutes for your ship to be retrieved from the hangar cells.”

She’s already turned away from the frame before it finishes getting through its usual operational diatribe, her steps hasty towards the nearest stairwell up to the flight bay catwalks. Considering she’s sure that Glyph is going to maintain its silence as she makes her way across the flight bay towards the loading area, it’s a surprise when it chooses to speak up.

‘ _I have a feeling I know what the answer is going to be, but I have to ask again: are you_ sure _you want to do this?_ ’

Licking her lips and telling herself that Glyph is completely justified in its worries, Quinn’s eyes settle on the sleek black lines of Roland’s ship as the bay clamps lift it up to the landing she’s heading for. “I know you don’t think this is a good idea, Glyph, but I want to know what this guy’s up to.”

It doesn’t say anything to that but she can tell it’s not fully convinced. Hell, _she’s_ not fully convinced. The question lingers between them on whether or not that's the real reason she's doing this.

“Besides,” she says, stopping in front of her borrowed ship and setting a hand on the railing, staring into the empty windows of the cockpit, “if we’re going to tell the Vanguard about all this, might as well have as many details as we can get, right?”

‘ _I guess_.’ It still doesn’t sound happy, but she refrains from repeating that it’s under no obligation to keep following her into this mess she knows she’s probably jumping feet-first into.

Without her having to say a word, Glyph transmats her into the center of the ship and materializes, flitting over to the cockpit with her following shortly after. Gradually the lights of the console brighten as it goes through a startup sequence, and as she sits down in the pilot’s seat she reaches up to pull the traffic feed down into her line of sight on the screen.

The ship jolts slightly as the station keeping thrusters kick to life, and again when the deck clamps release the hull and it drops before the thrusters catch it. The urge to take hold of the flight stick hits her but she resists, still unable to break that instinct even after years of knowing Tower routine.

The hangar bays had always been designed for ghosts to handle the ins and outs of ship docking, tight spaces meant for a balance between efficiency and safety; even guardians that had issues not having control of their own ships were required by Vanguard policy to only take control after leaving City airspace.

She’s never felt particularly comfortable controlling her ship, but a gut reaction was hard to control.

“Hold on.” Glyph says, dematting into the ship’s systems. The ship tilts as it slowly edges into the flight bay and turns to wait for the traffic controller’s go-ahead. A series of unhappy beeps leave the ship’s comms. “ _How Ghost manages the controls like this, I have no idea. Ugh, it’s a_ mess _in here_.”

She presses her lips into a thin line to keep from laughing, amused at the reappearance of Glyph’s usual charm and color—and at the thought that Roland’s ghost is just as much of a disaster as its guardian is.

A green triangle with an exclamation point appears in the bottom right of the ship’s screens, and she feels rather than hears the engines kick into gear. Within moments they’re in open air; a flight path on screen indicates where they’re being directed, more for her own benefit than Glyph’s. It takes them between a few towering skyscrapers and through the center of the City airspace—directly under the Traveler.

Her eyes lift as they pass under the shadow of the monolithic machine that had given all of them the power of the Light, internal machinery glowing and gently illuminating the clouds that drift around and above it, seemingly caught in its orbit along with the sections of its shell that had shattered with the resurgence of its power when it—rather than her own fireteam—put the final blow on Ghaul.

Something still feels foreboding about that. She knows she isn’t the only one that feels that way.

She only refocuses on the view in front of the ship once they leave the Traveler behind and move out of City limits, the ship gently arcing up and away from the ground. Various feeds and data vanish from the viewscreen the farther they get, and the dark blue of nightfall gives way for clear black and sparkling stars as they pass through the atmosphere and into the emptiness between them.

A grid of intricate data replaces the emptiness of the screen, plotting a path through hyperspace as Glyph activates the jump drives and puts them into the lengthy warp that’ll take them to the outer reaches of the system.

She stands and moves away from the cockpit.

Usually this part of ship travel is what makes her most uncomfortable, to the point where she's never able to relax until she reaches her destination. Many guardians in transit left control to their ghosts and, depending on whether they were on the return trip or the outgoing trip, moved to the center of their ship to either catch some shut-eye or to pass the time by checking over their gear.

Or, in Cayde’s case, starting up betting pools and playing cards with anyone fool enough to try and best him at a game.

She blinks away the phantom image from her memory that had overlaid the inside of Roland’s ship, standing there in the ship with her arms wrapped around her middle and a hollow pit in her stomach.

It’s too quiet in the ship. It’s _always_ too quiet.

She’s not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse, but this time, with it having been nearly a full day since she’d last slept and all the emotional ups and downs in between, she feels like she may _actually_ be able to rest while in transit. She's _exhausted_.

And silent as the ship is, for the first time in weeks she feels like she's truly able to _breathe_. Out in the black, away from all the memories she's trapped with while in the Tower or the City, it feels easier to put everything from her mind and keep distance from her loss.

A loss that's causing her to snap and turn her anger on the people she cares for and who don't at all deserve it. The pit in her stomach twists. “Glyph—”

“ _Don’t worry about it,_ ” Glyph says quietly before she can get the words out, “ _I’ll keep an eye on things. Get some rest, I’ve got a feeling you’re gonna need it.”_

With a nod she moves further back; the last time she’d been in Roland’s ship had been during the Legion takeover of the system, when it hadn’t been his own ship they’d been using to hop around the system, trying to find a way to upend the Cabal’s sudden ironclad hold and stop Ghaul from taking the Traveler’s power for himself.

He’s gotten a new one, since, so it takes her a few minutes longer to find where the ship’s bunk is. It feels a little odd to be using his bunk to sleep, but she isn’t going into whatever it is she's heading for while both physically and mentally exhausted.

Grouchy as he always is, she’s sure he wouldn’t mind.

Though free from the physical reminders of memory she's trapped with on Earth, Quinn finds no more comfort in the stifling emptiness of a ship in open space, especially not while alone. She feels torn, restless as she lays on the bunk, the thought in her mind persistent that she's _free_.

Free from Zavala and the Tower, free from the Vanguard and their rules.

She's free to steer for the Reef instead.

It scratches at the back of her mind as she drifts, tempting, pulling her under and making her feel as though she's drowning before an uneasy sleep claims her.

When Glyph wakes her a few hours later, Quinn feels less rested than she had been before lying down, and she can’t shake the prickling sensation that she's diving a bit too close to something that had every intention of grasping her ankles and dragging her into the depths.

Then she stands and has to blink away stars, dizzy, and she dismisses the thought as exhausted delirium.

Her ghost waits patiently for her to rouse herself from the half-sleep she’s stuck in, saying nothing as she pauses before the cockpit to bounce a few times and try to shake the dredges of that comforting blackness away. It’s a weak success, but she can already tell that’s she’s going to need some _real_ sleep soon or she’s going to collapse outright. “Where are we?”

“ _Approaching Nessus right now_ ,” Glyph answers as she sits down, reactivating the viewscreen for her now that she's awake and able to appreciate the view. “ _The coordinates are taking us to the dark side of the planetoid, but we have to pass through what’s left of the Legion fleet to get there.”_

“Think they’ll be a problem?”

Its response is delayed as it adjusts their flight path around a stray Cabal thresher. “ _I don’t think so. With both Ghaul and Calus gone, their leadership is in shambles. Most of their forces here on Nessus are planetside trying to keep what ground they’ve gained from the Fallen and Vex; not enough bodies to man weapons and navigation on their ships._ ”

That's some good news, at least. She isn’t too keen on the idea of explaining to Roland how she got his ship destroyed—nor having to transmit an SOS back to the City for a rescue and having to explain to Zavala how she got off-world in the first place.

The cabin falls back into silence, and Quinn runs her fingers through her hair, watching the viewscreen as they fly closer to Nessus’s orbit. When they do make it to the other side of the planetoid, Glyph beats her to the punch in a reaction to what they find waiting for them.

“ _What_ is _that_?” It exclaims in shock and awe. Quinn almost misses the sudden flurry of data appearing to one side of the screen as Glyph tries to analyze the object from a distance; sort of like taking a caveman’s tools to a high-tech computer array considering jumpships aren't designed for that kind of analysis. She can’t make heads or tails of the information, but she doesn’t need to in order to share in Glyph’s awe.

They’re looking at some sort of huge, spherical chunk of… _something_. It looks like a miniature moon, surrounded by a shimmering blue field with large rope-like structures looped around it. Something warps the surface of the object within that field, and she narrows her eyes.

“ _I’m not sure what it is, but I think it might be a chunk of a planetoid. A comet, maybe? It’s surrounded by a containment field, being dragged along by those carbon-fiber ropes—these energy readings are_ fascinating _—and…_ ” The data on screen halts and vanishes, replaced by a single waypoint directing them to an object neither of them had even noticed: a ship, slightly less than half the size of the object being dragged behind it, hiding behind its mass. “ _We’ve got a docking location_.”

“Is that ship where the coin’s signal was pointing us?”

“ _Seems like it. I’m not hearing any docking instructions from anyone on it, but this is definitely the place. There are a few other guardian jumpships docked there already._ ”

“How many?” She asks.

“ _Seven_.”

Seven, with her being the eighth. So four-versus-four, if the assumption that Gambit is a competition is correct. She returns to fidgeting with the coin after asking Glyph to drop it into her hand, interest and excitement steadily drowning out her exhaustion.

As their ship approaches the hull of the larger one—the thing looks damn near derelict, held together with nothing but duct tape and prayers and covered in mis-matched panels welded into place—a slot opens up, large enough for a standard-sized jumpship to fit into, and it's here that the waypoint is directing them.

“ _Transferring the docking sequence over to the computer._ ” Glyph says, as the ship smoothly glides into the newly revealed bay. When the bay’s door slips shut behind them and bathes the interior of the ship in darkness, Glyph appears in a flash of light and drifts towards her, following as she pushes out of the pilot’s seat and heads for midship.

“Ready to go see what we’ve gotten ourselves into?” She asks it.

“No,” is its immediate, uncomfortable reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was edited on one (1) monster energy drink, no sleep, and spite. please forgive errors.  
> i'm pretty sure the release of Joker's Wild is throwing whatever shit i had planned right into the dumpster but i dont care. 
> 
> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


	3. learning curve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _n. the rate at which something can be learned, or the degree of difficulty in learning something._

The deck is utterly silent when Glyph transmats her down to it.

The air around her is still; the only sound she can hear is the creak of heated metal from her ship as it slowly cools and the occasional soft whisper of displaced air from whatever oxygen filters the larger ship uses.

With how beat up and old the ship looked on the outside she’s thankful the air even works—it would’ve been pretty damn embarrassing for Glyph to need to transmat her right back into her ship because she hadn’t thought to ask if there was atmosphere. She’s used to relying on her fireteam leader letting her know whether her typical avoidance of helmets would fly.

Luke called it her ‘allergy’. She called it ‘not liking to feel encased.’

Habit or not, forgetting to ask if she would be able to _breathe_ upon leaving her ship wasn’t a lapse she would’ve made if she were running on all cylinders; she needed to get some decent sleep soon.

There are two ships docked to the left of hers, both devoid of any signatures within as per Glyph’s deduction; the ship to her left was specific to New Monarchy’s development line. Her eyebrows drop lower over her eyes in distaste.

There was always room for exceptions, but she doesn’t hold out hope that she’s not going to be dealing with a prick in the very near future.

Directly in front of the line of docked ships is an open platform with a set of triangular, dimly glowing pads, penned in by a glass barrier. She steps out onto the platform until she’s in front of the barrier, noting first that the bay the platform is in is much longer than it was wide, stretching a hundred yards into the distance to her left.

She’d almost think it looked like some kind of docking bay in and of itself, but with a glance behind her at the line of ships she lifts an eyebrow and wonders why it’s so empty save for the platform.

Across the bay from the platform she’s on is another one, identically penned in and featuring the same four glowing pads. If she squints she can just barely see the outlines of more ships beyond that other platform; definitely a four-versus-four setup, if all eight guardians present were divided to both sides of the ship.

Illumination finally draws her eyes to the left where another raised platform stands, almost resembling a podium and lifted above the other two in the bay. It’s connected to either side of the bay by a set of bulkheads.

And the illumination is coming from—

—gooseflesh ripples violently over her skin and she sucks in a startled gasp of air at the sight of what stands beyond the podium. It’s some kind of tank or enclosure, but what’s within is what leaves her cold and filled with terror.

Twisting forms of viscous, liquid-like darkness curls and writhes behind the glass, contrasting with the brightness of the glowing energy. The all-too-familiar contradiction of the paracausal and eldritch power of the Ascendant Plane, wielded by the Taken King to twist beings to his bidding.

And it was trapped within a tank like a spectacle in a zoo.

Flashes of a nightmarish, blackened landscape of endless gales and primal roars rush through her mind as she stares, unable to tear her eyes away for fear that the power she looks upon would reach out and rip her to shreds.

‘ _Breathe, guardian_.’ Glyph says, the chirp in her head snapping her back to reality and allowing her to finally drop her eyes to the deck below her feet.

She lets out a shaky breath and closes her eyes, blocking out the blinding darkness and forcing her focus inwards until the sharp edge of panic ebbs and her breathing slows to normal. It’s been years since that botched mission on the Dreadnaught that killed Gil, and yet…

If only Eris hadn’t disappeared when the City fell. Quinn wants desperately to ask her how she’d put the fear of Darkness behind her.

‘ _We have another waypoint_.’ She blinks at Glyph’s careful statement. The tone in its voice tells her that, with the sight of what was being contained on this ship, it wants her to turn around and leave. If she were being honest with herself, _she_ wants to turn around and leave.

Once again, she’s left asking the same question: who the _fuck_ is the Drifter, and what the _fuck_ is he up to hauling around his own little chunk of the Ascendant Plane? And she _knows_ that’s what it is—even with two barriers between it and her she can still recognize its awful power.

“Right,” she swallows the stone that had lodged itself in her throat, blinking rapidly and turning away from the glass, “which way?”

‘ _That bulkhead down to your left. I’m seeing light signature in that direction, too. Just three. The other four are on the other side of the ship._ ’

Well, she’s willing to bet that meant she’s about to meet her teammates. 

Her eyes drift back up to the twisting darkness just beyond the docking bay she stands in as she begins to move and then quickly return to what’s in front of her. A shiver ripples up her spine; there isn’t any obvious creature through that glass, but even so she can _feel_ something looking back at her.

She leaves the docking bay behind, following Glyph’s directions. She’s so used to letting her team give her direction ad warning—it’s frustrating and unnerving to know she’s going to have to use her helmet while here.

Listening to Glyph tell her _this way_ and _that way_ , especially if they were going into a high-risk situation, would be inefficient at best and downright deadly at worst.

Pulling her armored duster’s hood up as she passes through a third bulkhead and into a room that stretches around a corner, voices reach her ears and Glyph goes silent as she approaches.

“I’m getting tired of _waiting_. I wanna _fight_ something.” A woman whines.

“Calm down, Ash. We all had to pass through the Cabal exclusion field to get here—our fourth is probably taking it carefully.” A deeper voice responds; though it’s a statement meant to calm the first speaker, Quinn can hear irritation in it.

A snort follows the second voice. “If our fourth is so incompetent they cannot pass through such a threadbare fleet, I doubt their ability to contribute to this team I must work with.”

Her expression darkens with humorless amusement. _Found the New Monarchy supporter_.

The first one that spoke lets out a frustrated, impatient groan. Quinn imagines she was about to say something else, but all conversation halts when she rounds the corner and grabs the attention of all three.

She bristles at the sudden intense scrutiny and her eyes narrow at them in turn; hunter, titan, and warlock. The whole trifecta of classes.

With her being the odd one out.

The hunter is small, probably only a few inches taller than herself and clad in the typical lightweight but functional armor favored by hunters, painted in bright pinks, vibrant and obviously meant to call attention to herself. 

She’s awoken, her skin a dark purplish gray and eyes glowing silver, face heart-shaped and features petite and cute—but the look in her eyes is almost manic, contrasting entirely with the gentle upwards tilt to her lips. Her hair is wavy and cut to the line of her jaw, a light lavender in color.

“It’s about _time_ ,” she says, flipping a knife in one hand and settling the other impatiently on her hip, “I was promised a good fight and you almost ruined it!”

 _Impatient, trigger-happy_.

“Don’t mind her. We were on Io and made it here first. That’s Ash, I’m Finn.” The titan introduces the two of them with a sigh and a glance at the hunter.

Their features are longer and more androgynous than Ash, body wirier than the usual titan but no less large. They’re awoken as well—light blue skin, orange eyes, and a white painted marking down the middle of their lower lip and chin with short, blue hair. 

They wear inky black armor that’s much heavier than the rest of those in the room is painted with bright splashes of white like a direct contrast to their hunter friend, and the fan-like sash they wore over their hip is white.

 _Patient, a mediator_. But their armor is also banged up to hell and back, suggesting the titan is just as much into a good fight as Ash.

“Quinn.” She introduces herself in turn, shifting her weight and turning to scrutinize the warlock next. She nods at him in greeting. “I got held up on Earth, not by the Cabal.”

“It matters not.” He sniffs derisively, squaring his shoulders and standing with his hands clasped behind his back. His robes are swathed in whites and golds, gilded with elegant patterns and decoration, and he wears a black-and-gold patterned scarf tucked into the neckline. His skin and eyes are dark and his head is bald. Gold shadow matching the patterns on his robes covers his eyelids. “You were inefficient and I hope that does not extend to your participation in this challenge.”

 _Arrogant_.

Of the three, Quinn thinks she may only be able to truly tolerate Finn.

Lips pursing she turns back to Ash and Finn. “I’m guessing we’re all in the dark on what we’re doing here?”

“Uh-huh.” Ash halts her knife-flipping long enough to reach back and adjust the black cloak on her shoulders. “Not sure what we’re waiting for _now_ , but I’ve got half a mind to kick that weirdo—and _you_ —for making us wait.”

Quinn ignores the threat and settles a pointed, stony glare on the warlock. “A challenge we’re all new to, so don’t act like you’re better than the rest of us.”

“We will see.” He replies with a curl of his lip. “My name is Adebole, and many do it but I would _ask_ that you do not shorten my name to ‘Ade’. I do not like it.”

“Nice to meet you, Ade.” She fires back with as much false cheer as she can manage, smiling when his countenance grows angry. Well, they were off to a good start.

Across the room Ash laughs. “I’ve changed my mind, I like you!”

 _That makes one of us_ , Quinn thinks, quietly adding ‘fickle’ to her mental list of Ash’s personality traits.

A nearby door hisses open and, like her own entrance, all conversation or attempts at it halt, the four of them turning to look at whoever had entered.

The Drifter stops just inside the doorway and looks over all of them, his eyes settling on her last and a wry smile finding its way onto his lips. “Glad you made it, darlin’.” He says, and she frowns when she feels like there’s some kind of private joke in there that she’s missing. “Alright, rookies, ready to learn what you’re all here for?”

“I am no ‘rookie’, Drifter.” Adebole responds vehemently. Ooh, her petty response had struck one hell of a nerve in the man.

“Prove it on the field, _rookie_.” Drifter neither misses a beat nor acknowledges the aggression, and Quinn fights down a smile at the way the response aggravates Adebole further. Turning, Drifter steps back through the doorway and gestures over his shoulder for them to follow. “C’mon, this way.”

“You can’t just tell us the rules _now_?” A whine colors Ash’s demanding question as they all file after him.

“You wanna get dead, sister?” Drifter asks.

The question throws Ash off balance for a moment. “No?”

“Then pay attention and follow me.”

‘ _Quinn, if this ‘Gambit’ is dangerous enough that death is a possibility, you realize I_ can’t _revive you, right? If you die, you die for good._ ’ Glyph opines to her, its discomfort heavy and grasping at her heart through their bond. ‘ _I don’t want to lose you, guardian_.’

The swell of emotion that hits her after that threatens to topple her and her steps falter as she fights to get it under control. She says nothing, not wanting to speak aloud in her present company and hoping the determination and promise she dredges up can be picked up by her ghost.

She has no intention of getting herself killed—she wouldn’t go down easy even if she did.

She focuses on the Drifter’s back as they follow after him, her eyes narrowing; operating a dangerous, unsanctioned competition out of the Tower under the Vanguard’s nose, seemingly aloof about guardians that may die within it, and then the giant chunk of _something_ his ship was dragging around and the damn tank of Ascendant power he kept—who _was_ he?

She can’t think of a single reason for someone with good intentions to have enough interest in the power of the Darkness to keep something so dangerous in close proximity.

“Why are you keeping a chunk of the Ascendant Plane’s energy on your ship?” She asks abruptly, the question leaving her mouth before she can think better of it.

All of them stop when he does, her three other teammates turning to stare at her, bewildered. She pays them no mind, her gaze unwavering from the Drifter’s form as he turns to look at her sideways.

That damn smile of his doesn’t falter.

They stare each other down and there’s a look in his eyes that, for the first time since meeting him, she can safely identify—he’s daring her to back down from her demand for answers and the thinly veiled accusation.

He’s daring her to recant it and show a lack of spine.

But she doesn’t back down, and like with their first meeting the longer he watches her the wider his smile grows. Whatever he sees in her he apparently decides he likes. “Noticed that, did you? It’s a conversation piece.”

She bites down her immediate response to call bullshit as he keeps walking. She’s the first to resume following, pulling ahead of the rest of the group as the only one not still stuck on processing what had just happened.

“Hold on, you've got a chunk of _what_ on this ship?” Finn falls into step next to Quinn.

“An alternate plane of existence, rookie. Try ‘n keep up.” Drifter replies breezily.

“How did you manage to do that?” Adebole demands, the tone of his voice having changed entirely—now he sounds dangerously interested. “You cannot just capture an entire plane of existence like a _beetle_ in a _jar_.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Her eyes narrow again; she has a feeling that whatever he’s keeping it for has something to do with why they’re here on his ship, so she keeps quiet as they follow him while the rest of the group tries and fails to get him to answer their questions.

He turns a corner and stops in front of a sealed bulkhead, leaning to the side to input some kind of code into a keypad next to the door. Archaic, by City standards. It reminded her of the old Clovis Bray facilities half-buried in the sands that had swallowed Freehold on Mars—Golden Age tech and security. Had he appropriated it for his own purposes, or had it always been part of this ship?

The door slides open with a pneumatic hiss and they follow him inside, all eyes drawn to the object in the center of the room as he walks towards it. It’s an upright, clear cylinder with a wide base and what looks like input slots on four sides, twice as tall as herself.

Some kind of container?

“The fuck is that?” Ash asks, squinting at it suspiciously.

The Drifter stops next to it and raps his gauntleted knuckles on the clear chamber, resulting in a series of hollow _thunks_. His smile is lopsided and—proud? Did he make whatever it was? “ _This_ is a bank,” he answers. “Specifically, it’s a _mote_ bank. There’s gonna be one in both teams’ arenas.”

Plural. More than one arena. Already different from the Crucible—no playing in the same pen, killing and being revived for points and objectives. But he had implied there was an inherent danger to the game, and that meant there was going to be more to it than the two teams being kept separate.

“Now, don’t you worry—your opponents got the same explanation you’re gettin’, but pay attention ‘cause you’re all in for a fight tougher ‘n more involved than any kiddie games like _Capture the Flag_.” 

Damn, the Drifter must _really_ not like Shaxx to be insulting him so openly; half the guardians in the Tower held the superstitious belief that the Crucible handler had some kind of supernatural sense for insults and slights, and _no one_ wanted to be on Shaxx’s bad side.

He continues, stepping towards them. “Both teams transmat down to their respective arenas. In both you’re gonna face enemies you’re already familiar with: Cabal, Vex, and the Fallen—”

“What, are we racing to see who can kill the most enemies first?” Ash interrupts.

“I said _pay attention_ ,” The Drifter says sharply, and then continues as though she’d said nothing at all. “I wanna be clear: these enemies are as real as any you’d put a bullet in elsewhere and make no mistake, they will put a bullet in you _and_ your ghost same as. This ain’t any kinda game to _them_. You got a problem with dyin’ for good, now’s your chance to skitter back home with your tails between your legs.”

None of them move, though she can feel Glyph’s open discomfort through her light and it’s probably silently begging her to take the chance while she still can.

The Drifter’s expression turns pleased in a way that has her shivering; she was beginning to understand why Glyph had said that something just wasn’t  _right_ with him.

He paces towards them again, gesturing idly with his hands as he speaks. “Now, whichever enemies chance decides to throw at you, you gotta kill ‘em. Simple, right? Well, all these enemies are gonna drop things called ‘motes’.”

As if to punctuate the statement, a small, glowing, pyramid-shaped object is transmatted into his hand—presumably by his ghost, who they all had yet to see. He turns to her and tosses the object over to her.

The second it lands in her palm she immediately fights not to throw it away. Her skin _burns_ like an ice cube on bare skin where it sits in her hand, even through the light gauntlets she wears, and she again feels the distinct pull of the dark energy she’s so uncomfortably familiar with.

The mote glows softly as though innocent, but she knows instinctively that this thing isn’t any further from the Darkness than the Taken energy in that tank.

“Your jobs,” Drifter’s voice returns her attention to him and he gestures to all four of them, “is to collect the motes and drop ‘em in the bank, and to do it faster than your opponents do. You drop enough of those motes in the bank at once and it’ll send a nasty surprise to the other team’s side, blockin’ their bank and makin’ their lives miserable.”

She takes the moment of him looking away to quickly pass the mote off to Finn, trying not to make it look obvious how uncomfortable she was. “What kind of ‘nasty surprise’?”

“One of the Taken.” He answers, grin widening at the way she goes stiff in response. “How nasty it is depends on how many motes you got when you bank ‘em.”

Her chest tightens with discomfort; if the other team got this same explanation, it means _they_ could do the same.

She supposes she can’t avoid fighting the Taken forever, but Sky-be-damned she _isn’t_ excited to know that this competition was going to involve them, much less to know that she’ll be _actively_ sending those monsters to attack the opposing team.

“Having second thoughts, darlin’?”

Quinn blinks up at him and tries to school the uneasy feeling away. She hadn’t even realized her focus had lapsed. He’s smiling at her and the challenging look in his eyes is back; he’s still reading her like an open book. “No.”

 _Stop calling me that_.

He watches her for a moment longer before moving on. “Your _first_ goal is to fill the bank before your opponent does.”

Unlike her, Finn, and Ash, Adebole is still holding onto the mote that the Drifter had tossed to them. They’d all passed it on as soon as they’d gotten a good look at it, but he’s still studying it with rapt fascination to the point Quinn wonders if he even heard any of the Drifter’s explanation.

“I assume,” Adebole says as though to prove her assumption wrong, turning the mote over in his hands and staring at it intently, “there is more to this competition than simply filling the bank.”

Drifter crosses the floor and snatches the mote out of Adebole’s hand, striding back over to the bank and completely ignoring the threatening glare boring into the back of his head. “You assume right.”

But he says nothing more, and after a length Finn lifts their eyebrows. “Are you planning on telling us what else, exactly, is involved?”

“Nah. You’ll figure it out. You’re all smart like that.” He replies with a kind of muted humor that Quinn just _knows_ means nothing pleasant.

“And what do we get for winning?” Adebole asks.

“What do you _get_?” The Drifter laughs as though it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “You get _paid_ , brother. Shaxx ever pay you to play his kiddie games?”

Competitive Crucible players _did_ get paid, but that was by the Factions rather than by Shaxx himself, and not everyone made the cut for Competitive.

Ash slumps forward like a pouting child and Quinn wonders if she’d been one of the ones that hadn’t made that cut. “Not unless you count pats on the back and congratulations as payment.”

Finn frowns at her, but they share the same interest in their eyes. They fix a look on the Drifter. “You said our first goal was to fill the bank. Is there a second?”

A brief, darkly excited look passes his expression, so quick she nearly misses it. He lifts his arms in a half-shrug with easy cheer. “Your second goal is to be bad guys.” He tosses the single mote in his hand into the air, catching it and then with a deft motion slotting it into the base of the bank.

A silent gale of Taken energy fills it.

Quinn feels the blood drain from her face and her whole body goes rigid with pure, animalistic fear. Though the room itself is silent, the howling of that storm of Ascendant energy is loud in her mind and an echo of the Deathsong she’d missed hearing the end notes of by scant seconds more than a handful of times hides in its winds.

None of the others react, and with a clench of her jaw she fights to reign her fear in.

Oryx is dead. Her team had entered his throne world and killed him once and for all. The Taken had no King, and they were all the weaker for it.

She can handle this.

“What d’you mean ‘be bad guys’?” Ash frowns.

“Simple,” he answers, tapping the bank with his knuckles again, completely unbothered by whatever Darkness those motes were made of, “there’s the obvious—send Taken grunts to play merry hell with your opponents, maybe kill a few in the process, make ‘em lose their motes and set ‘em back. Put your team at an advantage.”

“And the _not_ obvious?”

“Each team’s gonna have a gate in their arena that’ll open a portal to the other arena at intervals. You jump through, you get thirty seconds to play merry hell with ‘em _yourself_. Feel what it’s like to be the enemy.” He says, his grin turning wicked.

There’s something heavy to their silence this time. Something was significant about this particular difference from the Crucible—still guardians-versus-guardians, but something inexplicably _off_ about it at the same time.

The sudden manic smile on Ash’s face makes Quinn nervous. “I like it. When do we start?”

Is she the only one unhappy that this whole thing involved the Taken? Is she really the only one that cares about how dangerous they are?

Just like that, the Drifter’s demeanor melts back into the unnervingly easygoing, friendly one she was becoming familiar with. “Head back to the docking bay you all got here in. We’ll get started soon as both teams are ready.”

“Wait, that’s it?” Finn asks.

“What, you want someone to hold your hand? May as well go back to the Crucible, ‘cause I ain’t gonna.”

“What about _rules_?” A scoff leaves Adebole. Did the man’s entire repertoire of moods consist of exclusively ‘arrogant’ and ‘irritated’? “You have only given us how the game is played.”

The Drifter laughs again. “Rules? There are none. Fill the bank, kill things, beat your opponents, and make it happen by any means necessary. Best two of three wins. How’s that for _rules_?”

“Fine by me.” Quinn says after a pause, hoping her voice doesn’t reflect the thick, uneasy feeling twisting in her gut. Adjusting the hair under her hood she turns and heads for the door. “Always preferred trial by fire.”

“Yeah, yeah, no one’s impressed, blondie.” Ash calls after her, pointedly loud, footsteps following after her nevertheless.

She ignores the insult; the thin boast hadn’t been much more than an attempt to ward off the way her skin crawled at the thought of being in an arena with Taken than anything else. No holds barred, and they were going into it almost completely blind.

Discomfort aside, she found herself actually anxious to get started.

‘ _You ‘prefer trial by fire’?_ ’ Glyph asks her, nearly hysteric and fully incredulous. ‘ _Quinn, you could_ die. _You could die and for what? I really don’t think Zavala would ever find out what killed you—I doubt it would spite him half as much as you think it would!_ ’

“I don’t have a death wish and I’m not—” she stops herself from finishing the whispered statement, knowing damn well that she’d been about to lie not only to her ghost but also to herself. “Okay, so I’m _also_ doing this to spite Zavala. How is this any different from when I’m active out in the field, Glyph?”

‘ _You’re not doing that for_ fun _, for one thing!_ ’

Ash cuts off anything else Glyph tries to say. “Ugh, _great_ , I’m on a team with a loony that talks to herself.”

The lamenting whine nearly gets to her, but Quinn inhales deeply and forces it to roll off her shoulders. _Save it for the enemies, Quinn_.

They reach the docking bay without any more words exchanged and file into it. Across the large bay stands another four-guardian team, fanned out onto their set of glowing pads on the floor.

Glancing at the others, she and the other three follow suit and fan out onto their own pads. They must’ve been heavyweight transmat pads—meant for longer-distance movement than what ghosts and field kits were capable of.

Reaching up to lower her hood she winds her fingers through her hair and loosely ties it back; when she lowers her hands Glyph transmats her helmet onto her head and she lets out a soft breath to steady herself, then lifts her hood again.

Footsteps catch everyone’s attention and all eight guardians in the bay watch as the Drifter makes his way up onto the podium between the two transmat platforms.

He looks between the two teams with a wide, toothy smile and produces several of his jade coins out of thin air. Like when she had met him, he rolls them out over his knuckles with deft ease. “Alright, mavericks—ready to see what you’re fightin’ today?”

No one says anything.

He’s left many impressions since she first met him, but Quinn amusedly tacks ‘ _show pony_ ’ onto her what-the-fuck-Drifter list.

He snaps his wrist out and one of the coins sails into the air; all eyes are rooted to it as it arcs up and is caught again, then slapped down onto the back of his opposite hand. A heartbeat passes.

“Cabal on the field!” He calls out, lifting the coin and holding it out to them as though they were even remotely close enough to see what was on it. “Watch out for those Scorpius turrets, they sting worse than a left hook from Lady Efrideet.”

She nearly chokes out a laugh at the statement, thoughts of her scant few interactions with the Iron Lady that had briefly taken over Lord Saladin’s duties as handler for the Iron Banner tournament drifting through her head. She was a firecracker of a woman with a short fuse but otherwise good humor—how the hell did he know what a punch from _her_ felt like?

Better question: what had he done to _deserve_ it?

‘ _That coin has an engraving of the Red Legion’s sigil_ ,’ Glyph remarks, ‘ _he must have separate coins with an engraving representing each enemy type. I guess that was what he meant by chance, earlier._ ’

She watches the Drifter as he steps over to a workstation set into the podium next to him and begins to work at it. He took the whole ‘chance’ thing seriously if he had to take the time to set up the matches immediately prior to them beginning.

“Am I synced with the other three?” She glances down the line where her teammates stood.

Glyph beeps in confirmation and a moment later their voices filter into her helmet. Ash mentions wanting to be the first to get a kill and Finn let out a long-suffering sigh. It isn’t until Adebole demands they all stay out of his way that Quinn speaks up herself.

“We’re on a _team_ , asshole.” She snaps.

A laugh catches her attention and she looks back up at the Drifter, finding him nearly doubled over with mirth; a glance at the other team shows them all standing relaxed and still. Either the Drifter was tapped into their team comms and thought the vitriol was funny as hell, or he was just plain batty.

She’s not sure which to bet on. _Yeah, this is gonna go great_.

“Get ready to drop!” The Drifter calls out.

The glow from the pad underneath her intensifies as the transmat fires up and space rips apart around her.


	4. gambit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> n. _a device, action, or opening remark, especially one entailing a high degree of risk, that is calculated to gain an advantage._

Her boots hit solid ground with a crunch of dirt and her senses rush back with dizzying speed. Blinking away the disorientation of being in one place and then another massively distant one in the next instant, she thinks—not for the first time—that long-distance transmats _never_ stopped being unpleasant.

They’ve been dropped into a small cave littered with arches and levels, and ahead of them sunlight peeks through a set of openings out into what must have been their arena. Everything around them is painted in deep browns and unnaturally vibrant reds and earthy greens, the usual for Nessus scenery.

Quinn realizes then that none of them had discussed any sort of strategy.

Ash lets out a cheer and charges forward before she can even consider gathering one. “C’mon! Last one to bank buys drinks!”

 _I’m not drinking with you_ , she thinks to herself as Glyph drops her auto rifle into her hands. Stepping forward and hopping down from the high ledge they’d been transmatted onto, her knees bend with the landing and she starts forward with the rest of her team hopping across the higher level rock formations above her.

“ _Get ready for a firefight, and drop those motes in the bank!_ ” The Drifter’s voice crackles in through her helmet comms and a waypoint appears in her heads-up display directly ahead. “ _Enemies inbound at the base_.”

She wonders what that’s supposed to mean as they all exit the caves.

Their arena is laid out in a semi-circle ahead of them, penned in by a towering cliff that stretches around on either side like arms until it drops off at a sharp horizon and blue sky with the hazy backdrop of Nessus fading into the distance far below them.

A series of caves consumed by Vex machine architecture sits high in the left hand side of the cliff, and to the right is a small copse of red-leafed trees. The ground shudders under her feet with a teeth-rattling grinding noise filling the air as a massive Cabal resource drill drops into the ground somewhere behind those trees.

Immediately in front of her on a light incline sits one of the Drifter’s mote banks, already filled with twisting Taken power, and next to the cave entrance they’d just exited is a circular gate made of Vex tech. It looks altered, somehow, but she doesn’t waste time examining it further—it was likely the portal to the other arena they’d been told about.

Her teammates continue on ahead and she follows, all of them winding around a rock formation and finding the familiar industrial, rigid engineering of the militaristic Cabal stretched out across carved white stone.

A pair of Cabal legionnaires jump jet into sight ahead of a group of their fellows, all of them seven feet tall and massive in bulk compared to the four of them.

 _Here we go_.

Ash and Finn reach the two legionnaires first. One well-placed hand cannon bullet pops a legionnaire’s head from its shoulders with a hissing geyser of organofluid and a crackling, electricity-fueled shoulder charge turns the other into a three-hundred pound, charred pancake against a base wall.

Sparkling, opaque motes like the one Drifter had shown them pop upwards from the felled bodies and are picked up by one or both of their ghosts, dematting them out of sight.

At the top of her HUD, a bar she hadn’t noticed until now fills slightly with gray.

‘ _The Drifter’s ghost sent the rest of us details on what to track and send back to her,_ ’ Glyph explains. It’s a tracker bar for how many motes they held, then—and divided into halves, the other side ticking up slightly.

A way to keep the pressure on for them, letting them know where the opposite team was at in progress.

Adebole nearly runs her over in his haste to reach more enemies approaching them, forcing her to hop back and fight the immediate, irritated urge to take aim at the back of his head. 

It’d definitely be _one_ way to let loose steam, and she has no issue with knocking New Monarchy supporters down a few pegs—unfortunately, she _does_ want to win, and that meant tolerating Adebole’s arrogant behavior for the time being and hoping all four of them have enough semblance of coordination to make this work, strategy or no.

Charging forward and jumping up she plants her foot on a rock face and pushes off of it, two pulses of light letting her hop through the air as though she were on stepping stones, heading away from her teammates towards enemies they’d overlooked.

Her boot lands directly on the face of a legionnaire’s helmet and her momentum knocks it off balance. It makes an angry, unintelligible roar in an alien language before she unloads her auto rifle into its head and silences it, then she turns her fire on another.

Like with Ash and Finn’s victims, two more glowing motes appear. She collects them both with Glyph’s help and then moves ahead into the base on the hunt for more, aware of the alien weapons fire filling the air around her.

Adebole curses her whenever she grabs the motes that drop near her from his gunfire, but she’s seen several of the motes vanish and fade after being left in the open air for too long, so he can kiss her ass.

After picking up several more Glyph starts to mutter something about them. A Cabal centurion, meanwhile, larger and with hellishly nastier weapons than its lesser-ranked peers, turns its attention on her.

Its heavier weapon knocks down half of her overshield before she manages to duck into cover. “Glyph, _later_ , please.”

‘ _Sorry_!’

Bracing a knee on the ground, she spins out of cover and takes aim, squeezing the trigger and gritting her teeth while the rapidfire bullets chip away at the centurion’s shields—which pop and shatter after a full magazine.

She reloads quickly and then cuts it down with another hail of bullets. Unlike the lower-ranked legionnaires, it drops a handful of motes rather than a single one.

She darts forward and they all disappear as Glyph grabs them for her.

‘ _That’s it, I can’t carry anymore without them doing damage to me_ and _to you,_ ’ it says, sounding uncomfortable. What the hell _are_ these things? Nothing in the field she’d picked up had ever caused damage while in Glyph’s inventory.

It’s all well and good either way, she supposes. Not like she plans to hold onto them for long.

She twists around, her knees bending with the abrupt shift in direction and her boots and greaves scraping the stone underneath them as her momentum halts; ahead of her she can see all three of her teammates already running for the mote bank.

A new waypoint appears in her HUD, directing them to the network of Vex caves dug into the cliffs with waterfalls of crackling white liquid flanking its entrances.

Her teammates drop their held motes in the bank, and on her HUD the gray-filled portion on their side of the tracker bar fills halfway with the color blue. Two bloated orbs of glowing Taken energy burst up through the steady stream of it piercing the sky above the bank.

Her stomach twists. She’d completely missed seeing that earlier.

 _Keep it together_.

Just as she reaches the bank the other team’s bar fills with red and a roar of power explodes from the bank. It retracts into the base dug into the ground, and the quiet plea with herself flies out the metaphorical window as a Taken knight materializes in her path.

Its twisted, unnaturally twitching body swathed in glowing, oily darkness drips black ichor that poisons the air and ground around, and it sends a flood of terrified adrenaline through her veins.

The white orb that serves as the creature’s face, floating amidst the mass of what had once been a Hive knight’s head, twitches sickeningly to settle on her and her heart leaps into her throat. A roar leaves its mouthless face and its arm lifts above her.

She skids to a halt, nearly crashing right into it, and her skin starts crawling immediately with the sucking sensation of otherworldly power and the scent of ozone washing over her.

The ground shakes with the force of a downward swing that she barely dives out of the way of in time.

Before she can even think about turning around to fire on the knight, the same swelling roar of energy crashes through the air twice, and two grotesque caricatures of Cabal phalanxes with their massive arm-mounted shields join the knight.

Both are far too close for comfort.

“Guys, _guys_ , we’ve got Taken blocking the bank!” She yells over the comms, trying and likely failing to keep the panic from her voice.

“ _So take care of ‘em, miss ‘trial-by-fire’!”_ Ash calls back mockingly.

She glances towards the new waypoint where her teammates’ friend-or-foe tags are shown. Not a single one of them turns back to the center of the arena. She’s on her own with her worst nightmares right in front of her.

The split-second glance away is a mistake.

A rush of ionized air tasting like ozone strikes her in the chest and throws her off her feet back into the thick roots of one of the trees in the arena, knocking the breath out of her and sending a wash of stars across her vision that she hurriedly blinks away.

Her shields are gone and her back aches from the blow, and one of the two phalanxes is rushing her with its shield held out before it—it’s going to crush her against the tree.

Forcing her lungs to cooperate, she sucks in a gasp of pained air and taps into her light, vanishing in a flash of blue sparks and light and reappearing a few feet to the side just as the phalanx and its shield slam into the tree.

The bark cracks and splinters under its force.

Unphased, the phalanx turns for her again.

Dropping her rifle to the ground at her side, she pulls her hand cannon from the holster on her thigh and takes aim, firing a handful of rounds into its glowing eye.

It stumbles back with every heavy round until it vanishes as though sucked through a vortex, the remains of its corrupt energy seeping into and poisoning the grassy ground it had stood on.

The knight chooses then to remind her of its existence, roaring in a way that sends a ripple of gooseflesh over her skin, dredging up horrible memories of similar howls stalking her in a dark, lightless place.

Her aim follows her line of sight as she looks at the enemy—it’s stooped over with its arms wide, and she knows immediately what’s coming next.

Liquid fire erupts from the knight, spat from a mouth that isn’t there, and it arcs through the air in her direction.

Grabbing hold of her discarded rifle, she dives to the side with flame licking at her coattails and boots. Earth-shaking booms strike the ground from the knight’s massive, alien weapon as she darts under the lifted roots of a tree and around to the other side.

She has Glyph demat her rifle. She needs these things gone _fast,_ and the rifle’s lighter bullets did fuck all against an enemy that was half-incorporeal and soaked them up like a sponge.

‘ _Your shields are back up_ ,’ Glyph tells her as she reloads.

When she leaves the cover of the tree’s roots, the remaining phalanx is waiting for her with its shield raised and ready to slam down on her. Her first instinct is to turn and run away, her throat tight with terror—instead she puts on a burst of speed and jumps forward, throwing her shoulder into the center of the Taken’s massive form, knocking it back.

She would’ve hoped to knock the shield from its hand, but it was fused to the damn thing’s arm by whatever atemporal _bullshit_ the Taken were made of.

It doesn’t need time to recover, and she wouldn’t have given it time to even if it did, her gun lifting. She shoves it into what counts for its face—one, two, three shots, and then like the first its form melts and vanishes.

Unlike the Taken, _she_ needs time to recover, but she doesn’t have it. Before the phalanx’s form has fully dissolved, she sidesteps it and breaks into a run towards the knight that had appeared first. It roars at her, stooping in what she can only interpret as rage-filled challenge.

Fire erupts from it again and streaks towards her; she leaps from the ground, a pulse of light propelling her above the arc of flame and directly for the knight.

Her free hand closes around her hand cannon as she takes aim in midair, her legs outstretched and boots landing on the abhorrent creature’s chest. It falls under her weight and momentum and she unloads the rest of her clip into its head, the sensation of weightlessness from the fall nothing but an afterthought.

By the time her feet hit the ground again the knight has dissolved just like the phalanxes.

Her hands are shaking with adrenaline as she reloads her gun, dropping the empty cartridge and replacing it with one that Glyph transmats into her palm. She barely notices the sound of beeping and the hiss of the bank reopening behind her.

Right in the middle of an intense competition isn’t the best place to have a complete meltdown, but she can feel her vision narrowing and breathing growing shallow with the sudden panic overwhelming her now that it has nothing to push it back.

Her eyes well up with tears.

The Deathsong is a horrible roar in her ears, and massive claws reach through the blank emptiness between planes for everything she is.

Behind her the bank beeps and then retracts once more.

‘ _Quinn_ ,’ Glyph trills at her in alarm, and it has to repeat itself twice before she even registers her own name, ‘ _Quinn! More Taken inbound!_ ’

A pathetic whine accompanies her sharp intake of breath and she stumbles, spinning around as more booms reach her ears. Two more phalanxes appear. She lifts her gun in shaking hands, but before she can fire off any panicked shots a void light grenade erupts between the two Taken and melts them.

The bank beeps as though mocking her and reemerges. She exhales, lowering her gun and noting Ash and Adebole dropping down into the center of the arena from the Vex caves. Ash is laughing at her, and Quinn swallows down a wave of shame.

“So much for ‘preferring trial-by-fire’, huh, blondie?” Ash mocks, hopping up to the bank cheerily and dropping her motes into it.

She hopes her flinch at the rush of energy that lifts into the sky isn’t noticeable.

Adebole moves wordlessly to a different mote node and does the same, and eager for a distraction from the mortification Quinn notes that when he does so another swell of power _doesn’t_ follow Ash’s.

Before anything else can be said the Drifter cuts in, “ _Invader on the field! Find ‘em before they find you!_ ”

Through everything else she had completely forgotten about the second goal the Drifter had explained to them. _Invading._ Portal to the other arena and kill the opposing team, depriving them of the motes they needed to win.

A gunshot cracks across the arena, an expert sniper round catching Finn through the helm in midair and killing them as they drift down from the caves on a stream of their light. Their body drops to the ground limply and their ghost appears, frantically trying to revive them.

“That came from behind the drill!” Adebole calls out. He and Ash rush into motion, moving around her and disappearing into the trees.

She, on the other hand, darts around to the side of the bank opposite where they’d gone and ducks down, her panic vanishing once more under the weight of pure, cold survival instinct.

Another pair of shots ring out. Glyph grays out her teammates’ FOF tags in her HUD.

This guy was _good_.

Her hands are white-knuckled around the grip of her gun as she waits, kneeling behind the bank and alternately watching her radar and surroundings. Her radar lights up with red and she braces herself, lifting the weapon in her hands.

A titan, broad-chested and wearing dark red armor and a black mark clipped to his belt, crosses into her line of sight with a wicked-looking shotgun held in his hands. 

She adjusts her aim.

He notices her right as she fires off a trio of shots, the first two knocking out his shields and the third piercing his helm. His body drops, and his ghost appears and glowers at her. Before it can revive him both disappear in a flash, transmatted back to the other side.

Her breathing hitches when the Drifter’s laughter crackles on her comm. “ _You didn’t start that fight but you_ did _end it. Good job._ ” Somehow, his voice being right in her ear was worse than just hearing it aloud, and she still can’t decide why it affects her that way.

The rest of her team reappears from back in the cave they’d arrived in initially and she finally drops the damn motes she’s been carrying into the bank. Maybe she was imagining it, but the wave of energy that blooms from it and surges upwards seems bigger than the ones her teammates had caused.

As though to spite her, the bank retracts again and the portal that appears erupts into a form that makes the first handful look like dust particles in comparison.

 _Oh, fuck_ is the only thing she can manage to think as the lumbering, hunchbacked form of a Taken ogre with its bulbous head and wicked teeth towers over her. Its presence alone is enough to warp the air and space around it with power, making her feel ill, and the roar it lets out rattles in the cage of her chest.

She’s sure she’s white as a sheet under her helmet.

It occurs to her, then, that the Drifter had said that the nastier the Taken that appeared in the arena, the more motes they had to bank—if she was carrying the most motes possible, had she dropped one of these behemoths on the enemy team?

This was a terrible idea. She should have left the Drifter’s ship the moment she had found out this competition involved the Taken.

She can’t _do_ this.

‘ _Guardian,_ move!’ Glyph’s terrified voice snaps her out of her daze and she blinks, her heart leaping into her throat at the sight of the ogre’s massive arms raised and ready to crash down upon her.

Swearing a blue streak, she dives out of the way. The pressure of a clawed fist almost three times her size displaces the air she had been standing in only seconds before, and it slams into the ground hard enough to make it quake.

The shockwave sends her flying and she rolls to a stop fifteen feet away, her back slamming into the hard surface of her team’s gate.

She _had_ to do this. 

She’d already made the choice—stupid or not—to come here, to participate, and _damn_ her but she can’t stay paralyzed with fear of the Taken forever.

Gritting her teeth and gripping her hand cannon tighter, she forces herself to her feet.

Her teammates open fire on the ogre and draw its attention from her, ducking in and around the Nessus trees as the creature’s powerful eye blasts are aimed at them. 

She joins them in the gunfire, popping off shot after shot and diving out of sight whenever its attention returns to her; she could handle a handful of shots from lesser Taken, but an ogre’s eye blasts would vaporize her with ease, overshield or not.

Over the comms the Drifter tells them their invasion portal has opened up for use and she barely notes it. They have better things to worry about—

—or do they?

She glances at her HUD and notices two things: the first being her team is leaps and bounds behind the other, and the second is that judging by the large gray section on the other team’s bar, they were holding onto a _lot_ of motes.

When the other team’s invader had killed Finn, they had lost the motes they’d been heading to bank—and if the other team was holding onto their own motes and not banking them in order to send bigger, badder enemies their way…

‘Gambit’. A calculated and intentional, but risky, move.

She gets it, now.

The ogre bursts with a few more well-placed shots, its form losing cohesion and being pulled back into the Ascendant realm it came from. None of them have any time to celebrate—immediately after it vanishes, a knight and another ogre take its place.

Son of a _bitch_.

All of them take aim and lay in, but after a few potshots Adebole lets out a noise of frustration and then changes direction, running past her and nearly knocking her over again on his way for the bastardized Vex tech holding a Taken portal.

She stops firing long enough to attempt and fail to reach out and grab him. “We need your help, Ade!”

“If you were competent you would _not_.” He snaps back at her and then vanishes through the portal. It closes behind him.

Provided the Taken don’t succeed in sending her into a complete meltdown by the time this match is over—and provided she doesn’t get herself killed—she’s absolutely going to kick his _ass_. Lips pulling back in a snarl, she latches onto her anger and uses it to push aside her lingering fear at having Taken close by.

Fifteen seconds later the Drifter announces to them that their ally was being sent back without a single kill on the board.

The ogre and knight are gone by the time Adebole reappears from the cave, and while Ash and Finn dart off to the newest set of enemies, Quinn stands there and glares at him for a long, heated moment.

He’s radiating the same kind of absolute loathing she knows she is, and as she finally runs off for more motes she wonders if they’re even going to _make_ it to the end of the match before one of them attempts to strangle the other.

 _Focus_.

It’s easy to say when she isn’t facing down her worst fears.

Try as they might, they can’t catch up to the lead the other team built. Quinn finds herself missing the cohesion of her own team; no one on this team seems to want to pay attention to strategy, only caring about collecting as many motes as possible and ignoring their allies and other aspects of the competition.

If they wanted to win, they _needed_ a strategy. Adebole was too arrogant to care about the rest of them, but maybe if she can come up with an idea, Finn and Ash would play ball.

They suffer through another invasion and one more phalanx blocker, and by the time the other team’s bar has been completely filled and their red is replaced with yellow, they’re frantic. They bank as fast as they’re able to pick motes up, the yellow bar on the enemy’s side slowly being chipped away as they go.

Was that the part of the competition the Drifter had opted not to explain to them?

Adebole tries invading twice more and only manages to knock out one of the opposing four in both attempts. Curiously—and concerningly, to be honest—she notes that the one kill he does manage drives the yellow bar on the opponent’s tracker back up slightly.

Best efforts still get them nowhere, and they haven’t even filled their bank by the time the Drifter announces the opposite team has won the round.

If feels _really_ fucking bad, almost on par with how awful her first encounter with the Taken in years was. Both are mortifying, and as she feels the transmat pulling them back up to the Drifter’s ship she braces herself to deal with more mockery.

Shockingly, none is forthcoming after four sets of boots settle back on the transmat deck.

Ash, Finn, and Adebole are all as silent as she is. The last of the three is simmering in a quiet that speaks of rage rather than frustration, and it’s almost doubtless that he’s blaming the rest of them for their round loss.

“I like your team,” the Drifter calls out, drawing everyone’s attention up to him on the podium; he’s gesturing to her team, but the praise is immediately followed by, “ _do better_.”

To add insult to injury, he then turns to the other team and says: “Other team looks great, keep it up!”

Yeah, there was the humiliation she’d been waiting for.

She steps off her transmat pad and waves up to get the Drifter’s attention. “Hey, coach, time out?”

He must be able to hear the weariness in her voice. Between the energy expenditure and the adrenaline rushes, the emotional turbulence from the last few weeks, and the lack of decent sleep she felt wholesale terrible—and he can tell, a shrewd smile on his face as he kneels down on his podium and nods at her. “Two minutes.”

He sounds amused. She scowls.

Muttering a weak thank you, she steps over to her teammates. Both Finn and Ash gather up without protest, but Adebole remains apart, apparently unwilling to swallow his pride long enough to figure out how to work together and win.

“Look, guys,” she says, keeping her words on the closed team channel rather than the open air of he bay, “I get we’re all strangers and none of us are particularly happy we got matched up together, but if you want to win we _can’t_ just run off and do whatever we want. There’s too much involved in this for it. We need a strategy.”

“And I _assume_ you have one?” Adebole sneers at her, crossing his arms and looking blatantly unimpressed even behind a concealing helmet.

“Actually, I—” she blinks, surprised to find that she does, in fact. The beginnings of one, anyway. “I do.”

Ash’s hands settle on her hips and her head cocks to the side, skeptical. “Right, sure, we’re gonna leave strategy to someone that nearly pissed themselves because of a few little Taken.”

Quinn starts to snap back that she’s got a damn good reason for being so afraid of them, but she bites it down and instead lets out a soft exhale. “How many motes did you guys bank after that first wave?” She asks, instead.

Whether the question confuses them or they just don’t know how to answer, she grits her teeth past the aggravation and waits, acutely aware that they’ve only got a few minutes to figure out how the fuck to turn this around.

“My ghost says I had twelve.” Ash says.

“Nine.”

She, Ash, and Finn all look at Adebole, who suddenly seems hesitant to speak. He shifts in what Quinn thinks might be bare discomfort. “...Four.”

A beat of thick silence. “How many did you bank _total_?”

“...Seven.”

Quinn balks at him. All that hotshot talk of not being a rookie and the haughty arrogance, and he had the smallest haul? Is he _serious_?

Up on the podium the Drifter starts laughing uproariously. Yep, he was definitely tapped into their team comms.

Inhaling through her nose and counting to five, she forces the building wave of incredulous fury out of her mind. _Later_. Focus on the ups. 

Maybe he had grabbed the smallest amount of motes, but she _had_ grabbed a significant number from enemies _he_ had felled. “Okay, so out of the four of us, Ash and I managed to grab the most during a single wave. Finn and Adebole, you guys are good at clearing the enemies out.”

Finn picks up on where her mind is going without further explanation. “We steamroll, you gather. Bank fast, rinse-wash-repeat?”

Quinn nods.

“Aww, but I like killing the bad guys.” Ash pouts.

“I don’t think the ‘bad guys’ are planning on taking it lying down, Ash. You’ll still be able to kill them, but we need those motes to win and you and I seem like the fastest on the team.” Quinn replies, pausing for a moment to consider how sleep deprivation was going to start rearing its ugly head soon. That little fact likely wasn’t going to last for much longer. “There’s a max to how many we can carry, though, so Ade and Finn will have to run in and collect anything we leave behind.”

“I like it.” Finn says. “What about the invaders?”

Her mouth opens but the Drifter interrupts her. “Time’s up! Get ready for transmat.”

‘ _What about the invaders?_ ’ is a damn good question that she doesn't have an answer for. They’re like the Taken, she supposes—deal with them as they become a problem.

By invading they can deprive the team of motes to fill the bank, putting them ahead, and if she hadn’t just been hallucinating—which was a whole possibility considering how tired she was and how far she was pushing her endurance—then when the opposing team had filled their bank, killing them would drive that inexplicable gauge back up.

It made little sense to her, yet, but she has disturbing suspicion as to the reason. They were dealing with the Taken, after all.

Damnit, she _hates_ the Taken.

‘ _I’m not so sure volunteering to carry as many of these mote things as possible is a good idea,_ ’ Glyph mutters to her unhappily as she steps back onto her transmat pad.

“Maybe the more we hold onto, the faster we’ll get used to them.” She offers, weakly.

‘ _I’m not sure_ that’s _a good idea, either_.’

Before she can respond, she’s pulled through space once more and lands on the red, grassy ground of Nessus. Instead, something else occurs to her when she catches sight of the bank outside the cave. “Guys, one more thing: we need to work _together_ to clear out the blockers. These things hit hard and take a lot of punishment.”

“Got it!”

“ _Woohoo_!”

Well, it wasn’t exactly an _acknowledgement_ , but with Ash, she’ll take it. “Ade?”

“Yes, yes! If you’re so sure this will work, just go!” He snaps back. Still pissy, but at least he realizes that running off half-cocked hadn’t done them any favors last round.

Her and Ash move ahead of the other two, following their waypoint to the giant drill, and Finn and Adebole both hang back once they get close enough to start picking enemies off from afar.

Glyph warns her they’ve picked up the maximum safe amount to carry _far_ faster than in the first round as her and Ash dodge and weave in and out of enemies and under flying weapons fire. When she glances over at Ash, the hunter gives her a cheery thumbs up—followed immediately by her jabbing one of her knives into the throat of a legionnaire that had been trying to catch her off guard.

The opposing team hasn’t even banked before she and Ash do, the sickening rush of Taken energy exploding upwards from the bank. Both of them turn and head for the next waypoint up in the Vex caves without pause.

On comms the Drifter lets out a cheer. “ _You just dropped two Taken ogres on the other side! Let ‘em chew on that for a while.”_

His response—far too excited given the nature of it—is both validating and terrifying. It confirms her worry from last round and also makes her fear how many of those things they were going to have to face again.

If the opposing team was feeling petty, the fact that they’d just air dropped two ogres at once to deal with from the offset of the round meant they may do their damndest to return the favor.

Knights and lesser Taken are already bad enough. Ogres are the powerhouses, short only of—

She dashes that line of thought, an involuntary shiver nearly giving an ordinary phalanx the chance to crush her skull against the walls of the cave with its shield. She’s been struck by those things one too many times today as it is, thank-you-very-much.

“ _I am invading!_ ” Adebole calls. Hundreds of feet away, she can hear the burst of the Taken portal as it activates and then shuts down behind him.

Even down one person, the Cabal in the Vex caves go down quickly and in droves. Quinn isn’t vain enough to assume it’s because her threadbare plan is _that_ good, but she’ll at least allow herself to believe that her sense for people was still a high point on her list of skills.

On her HUD, the enemy team’s partially-filled gray bar is dashed in half.

‘ _They lost collected motes,’_ Glyph remarks. ‘ _This is...beginning to make sense._ ’

Beginning to make sense, and, ignoring her unknowingly forcing herself to confront her fears, beginning to feel like fun. Glyph isn’t going to like that. “How many?”

‘ _Judging by how much our gauge fills with how many we collect, thirteen. Best guess. Oh—eighteen, maybe. Drifter’s ghost isn’t sharing details_.’

With the Vex caves clear, Quinn and Ash head back for the bank again. Finn trails behind to collect what they’d left behind.

A pair of phalanxes wait for them; they fall quickly under the thankfully coordinated effort of her, Finn, and Ash. All three of them drop their motes in the bank and run for the next wave, a freshly returning Adebole with two kills under his belt following after he exits the transmat cave.

He seems pleased, now, offering her a nod of grudging approval when she passes by him on her way back to the bank. She returns it and allows herself a small smile, and the four of them set to work clearing out more waves in between clearing blockers and banking.

Her smile vanishes when the Drifter alerts them to another invader; her and Ash are both carrying fifteen motes apiece, and if the opposing team’s bar is any indication, they were getting close to catching up. If this invader takes out three of them as he did last round, it’s all but a certainty.

“ _Base_!” Finn shouts moments before the first long-distance round echos off the cliff walls of the arena, coming from the area they’d indicated. 

Quinn winces. _Twice_ now. _Poor Finn_.

Glyph makes an equally unhappy noise as it grays out their FOF tag on her HUD. Eight motes down.

Ash darts past her in a flash, a quick, rolling dive tearing her through reality into the light of the void and rendering her invisible to the naked eye, hiding from bullets she knows have preemptively marked the two of them as priority targets.

Quinn swears under her breath, bursting through the Nessus trees into the center of the arena—only to turn right back around and make a break for some kind of hiding place, wishing she had spent more time with Nyx trying to learn the trick Ash had just pulled out of her sleeve.

Another shot echoes.

Fire blossoms in her midsection, a white-hot lance from a heavy round that cuts through her shields and armor like a hot knife through butter. Her vision goes white for a split second from the severity of the pain and she knows right away that the round hadn’t just pierced flesh.

 _Ribs_ , she thinks, sucking in a gasp of air and unpleasantly confirming her first guess, _had to have nicked the bone_.

She forces herself to keep moving, every movement leaving her in agony. “ _Glyph_?” She coughs out hoarsely, diving back into the reaching roots of the trees and ducking out of the open before the invader’s next shot can go through her skull.

‘ _I can’t! You have to be healing yourself or I can’t isolate the material from your light!_ ’ It replies, sounding like it was trying very hard not to panic and failing miserably. 

She already knew Glyph couldn’t heal her itself—she’s not sure why the idea that it can’t just grab a bullet lodged within her energy field and transmat it out had caught her by surprise.

Not even the Cabal use hard, solid slugs like guardians do. She’s never had to deal with an injury like this before.

Well, now she knows why Shaxx won’t let her in the Crucible.

Another sniper round cracks out. Ash’s FOF tag is grayed out as well.

Both teams are now neck and neck.

Heavy footsteps approach her from behind as she leaves the safety of the trees, trying to reach the cover of the jagged rock formations within the caves. She braces herself to spin and throw up one of her bubble shields.

Before she can, a shotgun blast booms behind her and her stomach drops, a sense of vertigo hitting her as she waits for the inevitable pain to arrive.

None does.

Adebole breaks the startled spell she’d fallen under with a harsh bark and the cocking of a shotgun’s slide. “Gather yourself!”

She inhales sharply, the pain of the round lodged in her torso throwing everything back into stark clarity. Everything hits her at once, then. The fire in her midsection from the injury, her fear of the Taken and the stress of facing them again, the bone-deep and pervasive exhaustion she hasn’t been able to chase away with sleep since returning from the reef.

The cold sting of loss, and the frustration of not knowing how to deal with it.

Frustration gives way for cold, rather than boiling, rage. Her head feels clear for the first time in months.

Her eyes flick up just in time to see the opposing team’s gray collection bar tick up and surpass their own. Not banked, but they’d have one _serious_ problem if it was.

“ _Portal’s open!_ ” Drifter calls out. “ _Go give ‘em hell!_ ”

Teeth grinding, Quinn makes one doozy of a _stupid fucking decision_ and spins, sprinting back to the center of the arena—and then she turns and heads for the portal rather than the bank, completely ignoring the fact she was still carrying a full group of motes.

 _Fuck it_.

Glyph lets out a tinny series of fearful noises. ‘ _What are you_ doing _?’_

Hell if she knows, at this point.

She doesn’t answer it. “I’m invading!” She tells her team, similar protestations from her teammates following after her as the swirling portal in her eyes grows larger and the sucking sensation from another realm grips at her.

Ash, on the other hand, lets out a whoop and a, “ _Get ‘em, girl!_ ”

Without any of the hesitation she knows she should be feeling, Quinn leaps through the portal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i need to write an entire drabble about glyph getting to go on a vacation. jesus.


	5. primeval

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adj. _of the earliest times or ages; primal; primordial._

A million things rush through her head in the scant few milliseconds that pass between jumping into the portal and appearing on the other side.

The one with the heaviest weight is: _had she just signed her death warrant_?

The unnatural energy of the Ascendant plane grasps at her skin almost hungrily as time simultaneously rushes and slows, space ripping apart around her and leaving gooseflesh rippling up and down her arms. Then she blinks; the blank emptiness of nonexistence is replaced with the opposing team’s arena, and the feeling passes.

A part of her already regrets her choice, and her boots haven’t even hit the ground. Cool survival instinct is telling her to turn and run for the farthest corner of the arena, to hide until her timer runs out and she’s pulled back to her side of the match.

The other—recklessly suicidal or simply itching to unleash the violence she wants so desperately to point _elsewhere_ —is the one that wins out.

She’s never felt like she does right now. Powerful, like she can single-handedly take on every enemy of humanity and _win_. Any weariness had vanished in the face of a wave of inexplicable energy—is it the rush? Knowing that this could very well be the last thing she ever does?

There’s certainly going to be far more bullets fired _far_ more intelligently waiting for her here.

“ _You’re invading!_ ___Make a mess_.” Drifter growls into her ear; it leaves her shivering from something she can’t identify—something between anticipation and dread.

As the jump from the other side drops her through the center of a massive, decrepit Vex gate covered in moss, she takes in the layout of the arena.

It’s wider than hers, lacking the sheer drop opposite the cradling cliff wall that sits lower than the ones on her team’s side. More trees litter the landscape and there’s no massive drill hovering in the distance. Another Cabal base is spread out across levels of unnaturally geometric white stone in a far corner, and aside from the trees, large boulders and natural stone obelisks litter the open ground in front of her, impeding her vision of the rest.

She wastes no time moving forward once her boots hit the ground and she leaps up on a burst of light, only distantly noting the sharper rush of adrenaline and the way her skin prickles with energy—like she’s standing too close to Luke when he unleashes his Stormtrance.

The gun that had been in her hand has been replaced by an etheric blade, an opaque and crystalline deep blue. Where had it come from, where had her gun gone, and how hadn’t she noticed it earlier? The curiously unconcerned wonder washes away quickly with cool, intense focus.

She lands on top of one of the boulders with another pulse of light in midair, and it’s then that she catches her first sight of the enemy team’s bank in the center.

They haven’t seen her yet, but they know she’s here—two of them are running for the bank from beyond the trees off to the left, and another appears from the Cabal cliffs to join the same titan that’s been plaguing her team in the effort of clearing out the Taken knight that appears in front of the bank.

Under combined fire, it provides little disorder for them.

Somewhere in the back of her awareness she hears Glyph let out a quiet ‘ _woah_ ’ while she reaches for a light within her that’s never felt so close. She has no idea what she’s doing or how she’s doing it, but something like instinct drives her motions.

She throws her hand forward, light bursting from it as she swings it around. An orb of crackling energy flies through the air towards the two guardians running for the bank, and it splashes across the ground in front of them, leaving a painted streak of light that glows brightly.

A wall of crystals, the same color as the gently glowing blade in her hand, erupts from the light; the guardians skid to a halt, frozen and visibly stunned from even a dozen yards away.

Hell, _she’s_ stunned and she’s the one that _did_ it.

She curls her fingers into a fist that flashes once, and then the crystal wall _explodes_ , sending the two guardians flying back. One had been standing too close to the blast, and the tracker on her HUD lets her know that she just knocked one out of the fight for the next ten-or-so seconds.

Familiar in a way that she can’t explain. Second nature, with no memories to back it up.

Her mouth splits into a wide grin.

They all notice her then, and the two guardians that had been fighting the knight take aim and fire on her while the one remaining scrambles back to his feet.

A hail of bullets rips towards her and she moves, pulsing through space with a flash of sparks and reappearing out of the way. Was that faster than usual?

_Twenty seconds._

Her weight shifts and she hops down from her perch near the edge of the arena, breaking into a run and expecting to use the next ten or so seconds to cross the rest of the arena and maybe knock out another of the team before her timer ticks down to zero.

Instead, her surroundings distort and stretch around her as her body blurs into a streak of vibrant light.

She crosses the space between her entrance and the center of the arena in seconds. Her reappearance leaves her briefly stunned and confused, forgetting for a moment where she is.

Then the titan moves in her periphery and she stiffens as he sprints towards her, speed belying his bulky size and armor. Her hand lifts and a shield pops into existence a split second before his shotgun rips through her ribcage more thoroughly than his sniper round had.

The shield flickers out of existence with closed fingers and she wastes no time, falling back onto her instincts and trusting this odd, familiar second nature. She ducks down and twirls the blade in her hand to a point, then springs forward—a flash of sparks and glimmering fractals replaces her form as she passes through the titan like a phantom.

The titan’s body melts like the void had consumed it, his ghost popping into existence where he’d just stood.

Another down. _Fifteen seconds_.

The heavy round of a hand cannon grazes her arm and knocks her overshield down in that brief moment of inattention. She spins, diving to the side to avoid another shot from the hunter that had been at the titan’s side. Rolling to her knee, she throws another bolt of light at him.

It strikes him in the chest. Like the first, glittering crystals erupt from the light painted on his armor, and with a clench of her fist they explode.

 _Three down, ten seconds left_.

Where the hell had the last one gone? She glances at the tracker bar; their gray portion had been cut in half. The last was carrying the most motes and had bolted to hold onto them.

Her radar flashes red, and she takes off in that direction back into the trees.

A receding trail of light and crystal shards follows her steps as she runs—what the fuck _is_ this? It can’t be a class supercharge. It’s not like anything she’s ever seen before. More importantly, how did she both know what she was doing and have no idea _how_?

The red on her radar spins around and passes her by, heading back for the bank. He’s feinting, trying to bank his motes before she can knock him out of the running.

She skids around and strains the muscles in her legs to follow after her final target. Being so intent on this feels strange. With three of the four down, she’s already slashed their attempt to catch up and given her team one hell of a lead.

But she _wants_ to. The addicting rush of taking on a team of four and coming out on top when they could easily cut her life short—

She breaks through the trees into the center of the arena again, the final member of the opposing fireteam two-thirds of the way between her and the bank. From a dense cluster of trees adjacent to where she stands, the first of the guardians she’d eliminated comes into sight.

 _Five seconds_.

Twisting, she hurls the blade in her hand at the fourth guardian. The world pulls apart around her as she drags herself through another warp centered on the blade.

She reappears in a flash of sparks, her boot crushing the guardian’s neck against the surface of the bank. The force of it shatters his shields and snaps his neck with a sickening _crack_ that leaves her disturbed.

The discomfort doesn’t last; her grin turns wild with exhilaration, and she hops back from the guardian’s ghost as she lands.

The sucking sensation of Ascendant energy settles greedy fingers on her skin and yanks her back into the network of caves on her team’s side of the arena.

“ _They should’a run! Look at ‘em now, they’re_ dead _!_ ” Drifter’s delighted cackles on the team comms should make her feel terrible, _sick_ with how much he seemed to enjoy that spectacle. At the very least, _she_ should feel sick from the brutality of that last kill.

She’s never experienced fighting other guardians, before, and she wonders how the champions of the Crucible respond to the unsettling feeling.

She wonders if they feel as wired by it as she does, rather than unnerved.

A dizzying rush of adrenaline fills her from head to toe as she leaves the caves, heading straight for the mote bank. The warm energy of her light fades and leaves the aches of battle to resurge angrily, but she pays them barely any mind.

She hasn’t felt this invigorated in nearly two months.

Slowing only for a moment to share a high-five with a laughing Ash as they pass each other, Quinn glances at the top of her HUD; the remainder of their tracker gauge is filled with gray, all the motes she’s still carrying practically begging to be banked.

Sliding to a halt in front of the open bank, Glyph deposits the combined motes into her hand. She slams them home into the receptacle, watching the bank gauge fill completely with blue—then it flashes, empties, and refills with yellow.

The air around them becomes suffocating and pressurized with ozone and power, the familiar tingle of Taken energy making her hair stand on end.

She warps back from the bank as it hisses and retracts into the ground, portals popping into existence all around her. Her heart leaps into her throat at the sheer _number_ of them, memories of getting overwhelmed and overrun on a mission over two years ago surfacing in her mind.

A massive portal, four times the size of the others around it, continues to build in size while the rest twist and warp into the familiar twitching figures of Vex, Fallen, and Cabal.

“ _You summoned a Primeval!_ ” Drifter barks. “ _Kill it, and you win the round!_ ”

Raw, animalistic terror consumes her as the portal finally bursts and pulls into a cohesive figure. Her body freezes involuntarily, the blood in her veins turning to ice.

For a moment she simply stares at the massive Taken—a Vex minotaur, tall as the trees around them and radiating so much unnatural power that she can feel it from a dozen yards away. The world around her grows distant, sounds and sensations fading into a backdrop as her surroundings are swallowed by a black, silently howling gale and the ground under her feet crumbles and drops into a nonexistent void.

A shot from the creature’s weapon arcs towards her in slow motion, growing larger and consuming her vision.

Primeval. Primordial. Something ancient and impossibly powerful and something she’d hoped to never have to face down again. With the Taken involved, she should have known it was too much for her earlier hunch to be wrong.

Somewhere between her ears, the deceased Taken King is laughing darkly at her.

A solid and heavy form slams into her from the side and knocks the breath from her. The world rushes back in like the tide, pain blooming through her already injured ribs as she’s thrown to the ground. Her and Finn roll to a stop down the graduated slope of the hill they’re on.

“Whatever issue you’ve got with these things,” Finn hollers at her over the roar of the countless enemies around them, rolling to their knees and firing at the nearest ones, “fucking _focus_!”

Sucking air into her lungs and latching onto the sharp pain in her chest to ground herself, Quinn gets to her feet and joins the offensive. Where she’d stood frozen moments before was nothing but scorched earth.

If she had thought the regular enemies of the arena and the few Taken that blocked the bank were bad, it’s nothing compared to the firepower they all stand under now.

The Primeval is terrifyingly strong in and of itself. It’s a fact she’s already acutely familiar with, but the swarm of enemies surrounding it only make things more difficult, all of them being frequently forced to clear the area to recharge their shields. Both Ash and Adebole suffer deaths once each, slowing their progress on damaging the Primeval even more.

It doesn’t seem like they’re _doing_ anything, their bullets barely chipping away at the yellow gauge in her HUD.

There has to be some kind of trick to it. The Drifter refusing to disclose this aspect of the game was some kind of test on his part. _You’ll figure it out_. Between the sheer amount of fire and power the Taken rain upon them and another invasion by the enemy team, it’s near _impossible_ to figure it out.

Ash is knocked out of the race amidst the swarm of Taken advancing on her, and Quinn watches Finn dive in front of her prone ghost to summon a flat, glowing shield of light to protect it from incoming fire. Not technically necessary while a ghost’s light field is active during revive, but kind, she supposes.

Attention shifting back to the main fight, her eyes catch on a thin, shimmering line of energy—a tether between the Primeval and a Taken wizard hovering near the back edge of the hill.

She blinks, makes a hopefully correct assumption, and barks into the team comm, “Take the wizards out! They’re shielding it!”

Without waiting for a response she makes a break across the field, ducking and dodging around more Taken fire while Glyph beeps and blips incessantly in a blue streak. She leans into her spin around a tree, coming up on the backside of one of the wizards hiding behind it.

On her HUD, the enemy team’s gauge fills with yellow.

The wizard shrieks at her when she sights on it and starts firing. Her handgun coughs out bullets as fast as she can squeeze the trigger while she strafes around the bolts of energy the floating creature hurls at her from tri-taloned hands.

Next to her comes the heavy boom of a shotgun firing. When she risks a glance to her side, she finds Adebole, and the shock of him actually trusting her judgement call is only averted by knowing they’re on a short timer. Between the two of them, the wizard’s shield pops, letting them hammer it with bullets until it lets out a dying shriek and melts away.

The enemy team, with a headstart on knowing how the Primeval works, have already knocked their gauge down by a third.

Neither she nor Adebole have time to think on it further—while they were dealing with their wizard, the Primeval had advanced on them, and Quinn’s eyes widen at the massive foot akin to a hoof lifted above their heads. She grabs hold of Adebole before he can dodge to the side and yanks him towards her, dropping her gun and lifting her hand to summon her bubble shield a split second before the Primeval’s foot crashes down on them.

The shield cracks like glass under the force of the blow but holds up, and a vague outline of a rocket blast that slams into the Primeval’s chest appears through the shield, drawing the creature’s furious attention away.

A weak tremble settles in her arm when she drops the shield and stoops to grab her gun. Adebole is staring at her and she grits her teeth, nodding over to the reopened invasion portal. “Go! I’ll help with the other wizard!”

Though she’s sure Adebole wants to ask what the fuck kind of ability she’d just used—there aren’t many that are aware of her state as an anomaly—she’s relieved to see him turn and head for the portal instead.

Ignoring the tired burn beginning to settle into her muscles, she breaks into another sprint around the edge of the hill, peppering the Primeval with more bullets as she goes.

It’s taking more damage.

They’d had a lead on summoning their Primeval but had fallen behind by failing to notice the wizards shielding it—hopefully Adebole can knock a few of the enemy team out and feed their Primeval, letting them catch up again.

She’ll file that horrific hope away to get sick over later.

The second wizard, already weakened by Ash and Finn, goes down faster than the first. The enemy team’s gauge fills back up as Adebole lets loose in their arena.

And now the race for the finish line _really_ begins.

The three of them turn on the Primeval and watch as it stumbles back with earth-shaking steps, the connection to the creatures that had been powering it severed. Its form has no head, but its focus is undeniably on them when its daze passes.

A glitchy, twisted roar leaves it. More portals pop into existence around its feet.

“Finn!” Ash yells as more Taken materialize.

“Got it!” They’re already ahead of them, weapon stowing as arc energy crackles over their armored form. The raging storm of a Striker titan is unleashed on the weaker enemies before any of them have time to attack.

It leaves Ash and Quinn free to set their sights on the big guy. They unload on it while Finn distracts it by running around nearby, removing its underlings from play, and a healthy chunk of its health is wiped away before Finn’s supercharge fades and the massive creature’s attention returns.

Weapon bolts fly at them and they both brace to dive out of the way. Between the two of them, a fiery blade of pure light is driven into the ground, and around them surges a well of empowering light that strengthens their shields.

The Primeval’s massive weapon washes over them harmlessly within Adebole’s Well of Radiance.

His body swathed in an almost holy glow of light, he releases the hilt of the light blade and joins them as they fire upon it. He hefts a rocket launcher and lets it loose, the rockets, given more destructive potential by the well, splashing forcefully across the center of its form and knocking considerable chunks from their tracker bar.

Cursing herself for the lapse, Quinn follows suit and has Glyph replace her handgun with her heaviest weapon—a linear fusion rifle that she levels and aims at the ‘eye’ in the center of the Primeval minotaur’s chest. The overclocked laser that strikes it leaves it stumbling back with every hit.

Finn hops within the well of light alongside them, and under their combined fire the Primeval all but melts.

With a dying roar, the goliath of Ascendant power twists and distorts as it’s pulled back into the alternate dimension it came from—as dead as anything that exists outside of the laws of physics can be.

For a tense moment they all stand there while Adebole’s well fades, either stunned or simply trying to catch up to the fact that they’d actually won after suffering such an embarrassing loss in the first round. The Drifter congratulates them on their win, and then they’re pulled back up to the ship.

The interior bay is filled with the kind of heated tension that can only come from opponents that are hungry for victory.

“Now _that_ ,” Drifter says, angled toward her team, “is what I’d call a dark horse win. Nice work, I ain’t bettin’ against you any time soon. All of you bring your A-game next round, ‘cause things are gonna get even tougher.”

He leaves his pre-round preamble there and turns his attention to the workstation on his podium.

Next to her, Ash is practically vibrating with energy. “I wish I could’ve seen what you did while over there on their side,” she says, her voice wistful and dreamy, “I dunno what it was, but you _wrecked_ ‘em. Awesome.”

Finn gives her a casual salute. “Yeah, good work.”

Silence follows, and Quinn blinks when both Finn and Ash turn to look—almost pointedly—at Adebole.

He clears his throat after a beat, shifting so he stands taller and lifting his chin in acknowledgement. “I _may_ have been wrong about you.”

She starts to laugh, then rethinks it when the bullet lodged in her ribcage twinges with sharp, angry protest. Her hand settles over her side, and she winces. “Apology accepted, Ade. You guys did great, let’s keep it up.”

Ash and Finn start to chatter with each other after that, and Quinn looks up at the Drifter. He sure seems to get his kicks out of this whole thing. Shaxx gets excited supervising his Crucible matches, of course, but in a prideful, encouraging manner rather than the Drifter’s utter delight at the carnage and chaos within the arena.

Was he getting anything out of this, aside from what seems to be simple entertainment? Doling out payment for absolutely nothing but putting on a good show seems just a _tad_ too generous for a guy like him.

As though he can sense her staring at him, he glances up at her with a pleased smile that makes her stiffen and drop her gaze.

It’s only then that she notices the titan on the other team staring at her across the bay.

Maybe she’s just letting her pride get in the way and coloring it as him being pissed that she’d whooped his team’s ass in one sitting.

‘ _Quinn, you need to heal yourself_.’ Glyph’s voice draws her out of her wary unease, and at the reminder she feels herself tremble lightly with weariness.

They have one more round to go, and she’s now doubting whether or not he has the energy to make it through.

Withdrawing and focusing inward to assess her state of being, Quinn unhappily decides that if she tries to heal herself _now_ it’s more likely than not she’ll get herself killed. Acute exhaustion is as deadly as any of the other dangers she faces in the field and _here_.

Not that it isn’t likely to happen anyway, exhaustion or not.

A morbid, tired thought crosses her mind—would she mind if it ended like that? At least she’d go out fighting. Just like Cayde had.

She hopes ignoring the injury isn’t going to make things worse, as well as hopes that she’s going to have enough energy to heal herself at _all_ once the match is over. “Will it kill me if I leave it for now?”

‘ _Quinn_.’ It chastises.

“Will it?” The repeated question lacks the force of a demand by a slim margin.

Glyph is quiet for a moment. ‘ _If you get knocked into something or get hit near the wound by an enemy again, yes. Finn’s tackle jostled it. And if it gets to your lungs—_ ’

She could choke to death on her own blood. Not a great way to go for anyone, let alone a guardian.

It’s a risk she’ll have to take. “Hey, guys?” They all look her way; she hopes that what she’s about to say isn’t going to wreck whatever rapport they’ve built. “I can’t pull another invasion like I did last round, and I have to play it a bit more careful this time.”

“Getting cold feet again?” Ash asks, now sounding more like she’s teasing rather than insulting.

“Believe it or not, no,” she replies, intending to explain before the Drifter whistles sharply to gather everyone’s attention. “Please, just trust me, okay? I promise, I’ve got a good reason.”

Finn gives her a nod, but none of them say anything to her request.

“Transmat firing!” Drifter calls out to them right before the disorienting feeling of a long-distance transmat grabs her and the ship bay disappears from sight.

When her boots hit the ground this time, she stumbles, nearly dropping to her knees before catching herself. Pushing herself past her limits is catching up to her rapidly, but it frustrates her to know that even while exhausted from weeks of sleeplessness there’s no reason for her to be drained so fast.

A little tired, yes, a little off-beat, _yes_ , but not _struggling to keep her footing_ tired. She’d spent a month straight doing nothing but running and fighting to stay alive before, exerting the same kind of stress this match was putting her through _continually_ , and it hadn’t begun to adversely affect her until well into that period of time.

 _Not the time to figure it out_. She hopes this round passes quickly.

Drifter’s voice filters in through her helmet on a closed channel while she stumbles forward, and she frowns at the direct contact. Save for her invasion, every communication had been over team comms. “ _Back to action, sister. Keep it up_.”

Shaking her disorientation, she catches up to her teammates and pulls up alongside Ash as they dive into the fray. Finn and Adebole mow enemies down from a medium distance, giving her and the hunter cover and clearing paths for them to collect the motes that drop.

A centurion nearly gores her with a shock blade after she stumbles from dodging a phalanx’s shield, and Quinn beats a hasty retreat with a full collection of motes.

Finn taps Quinn on the shoulder as they pass, turning to hop-skip backwards while Adebole runs ahead to collect the remainder of the motes. “Quinn, swap up next wave. Hang back, I’ll collect.”

“Alright,” she replies with relief. Maybe they’ll be a bit slower, maybe they won’t be—either way, she isn’t going to complain about playing it a bit more safe when her strength is waning and it’s getting harder to catch her breath.

After banking her motes, she follows after Ash and hangs back as they run for the system of Vex caves. Her gun sights on the first enemy to jump into view, but before she can pull the trigger an intangible pulse of light hits her and she watches as Ash’s body erupts with Void energy.

A pair of short blades, glowing with the purple light of the void, appear in her hands. The hunter’s form ripples and disappears from view.

Then motes pop into existence around her in rapidfire, void light ripping through every enemy in sight so quickly that Quinn can’t even keep track of it. Shit, of all things she had expected Ash to be, one of the rarest guardian subclasses isn’t one of them.

She makes a mental note to never piss off a Wraith-class Nightstalker as she runs forward to collect the motes Ash leaves scattered like pieces of candy.

The teams are neck and neck this round—with every inch her team gains on the other, it’s regained quickly. They’ve pulled their shit together as efficiently as her team had, and with the enemies in this round seeming to be tougher-armored, tougher-shielded, and more numerous, it’s even more harrowing and fast-paced than the two rounds before.

An invasion forces Adebole to hold off on invading himself, the four of them grouping up to deal with the titan that’s turning into the bane of her existence. The distraction allows the opposing team to bank their motes, and he successfully manages to rob them of their own motes by killing Ash before they can put him down.

It’s a tug-of-war from there, invasions from both teams cutting gains and doling out losses in equal measure as they all fight tooth and nail for the final victory.

They summon Primevals at nearly the same time, and then that struggle increases tenfold. Invasions come and go in rapidfire with violent intent to drive match gauges back up through team kills, and if Quinn had the energy to spare, she’d feel more mentally stressed over it than she already is.

Glyph is carrying enough stress for the both of them, as it stands.

She narrowly avoids being flattened by the titan’s thundercrash during an invasion she’d missed the announcement for, his body turned into a comet of electricity that’s blocked by her bubble shield. It miraculously holds up against the furious onslaught he unleashes on it. On _her_.

She really _must_ have pissed him off—the fixation is to his own detriment, because he fails to get a single kill before Adebole pumps three shotgun rounds directly into his back and eliminates the threat.

When her shield drops and a wave of dizziness hits her so hard that her surroundings spin violently and her stomach churns, Adebole has to drag her out of the way of a charging phalanx.

Struggles aside, it’s her team that comes out victorious, dropping their Primeval only seconds before the enemy team does theirs.

Like at the start of the round, her shaking legs threaten to give out from under her when she reappears on her transmat pad, every muscle in her body begging her to rest. Staring at the ground with her hands braced on her knees and willing herself to remain upright, she blinks at her legs—are her pants looser than she remembers them being?

Had she lost _weight_ over the last two months?

Inhaling and forcing herself upright, she pushes it to the back of her mind. It doesn’t matter right now, because her team had _won_. They had won and it feels good, and, weariness aside, for the first time in weeks, _she_ feels good.

Relatively speaking. Immediately after inhaling, a wave of nausea nearly causes her to dry heave, and after she forcefully swallows down the reflex, Glyph is quick to remove her helmet. Pursing her lips, she places her hand over her injured ribs. _Okay, now_ don’t _pass out._

The Drifter claps his hands with a wide grin on his face as he looks between the two teams. “One hell of a match. You did great! You guys, not so much.” He turns to the opposing team with the last part, pauses, and then waves a hand while laughing. “Just kiddin’. Good effort.”

She watches him pace back over to the side of his podium nearest her team. “You four head on back to where I first grabbed you; you’ll get your payout, just like I promised.”

“You’re seriously giving the win to cheaters?” One of the opposing team speaks up, voice incredulous.

Drifter doesn’t turn to face the speaker immediately. The grin on his face widens, but there’s nothing remotely good-natured in it—even from a few yards away, she can see it’s all teeth. “You wanna enlighten me on what rules they _cheated_ , hotshot?”

 _Rules? There are none_.

“Her—” The same titan she’s, from this point on, unofficially calling her nemesis— _fuck you_ —steps off his transmat pad and points clearly and furiously at her. If she weren’t focused on healing herself, she’d go stiff in offense. “Those weren’t any kind of legal subclass abilities she used.”

Her teammates are looking at her, now.

Drifter shrugs and waves a hand dismissively, unbothered. “Didn’t realize you guardians _had_ illegal subclass abilities. Looked pretty legit to me, brother.”

She frowns; Glyph catches his word usage as well, beeping in confusion. ‘’ _You guardians_ ’?’ it asks. ‘ _He’s one, too!_ ’

“I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s no way it’s fair in a competition when it’s never been seen before!” The titan insists, now pacing towards the Drifter as though trying to intimidate him.

“Only thing fair in this universe is chance, hotshot.” Drifter replies coolly, an edge creeping into his tone that has Quinn’s hair standing on end. “You _lost_. Case you forgot, I told all’a you before the match started: there _are_ no rules in Gambit. Her team wiped the floor with you. Learn from it and _do better_.”

The titan refuses to give up. “How are you supposed to counter a class like that? It’s not an even playing field.”

Jaw grinding and musing on the fact that she isn’t even sure what she did in that arena _herself_ , she isn’t happy with being accused of cheating. Not when it isn’t _her fault_ she doesn’t understand her own light or why it’s so different from other guardians.

She isn’t going to just stand here and take it lying down.

“I don’t _have_ a class _or_ a subclass. I’m using abilities even _I_ don’t understand because, yeah, no one’s seen ‘em before.” Inhaling sharply, she steps off her pad on protesting legs. “You think it’s unfair? You want evened odds? Fine, how about this—”

At that moment, something solid and warm materializes in her palm; Glyph had managed to dig the bullet out while she was healing herself. It would usually just demat it into material for crafting and repairing, but if it had dropped it into her hand…

...it isn’t happy with the titan’s vitriol, either.

Fingers clenching tightly around it, she keeps walking until she comes even with where the titan had wandered on his side of the bay. Staring him down and standing straight with nothing but sheer force of will, she lifts her closed fist and lets the bullet drop to the ground with a quiet _tink_.

It seems like a gunshot itself in the silent bay. “I don’t have a ghost that can revive me. _That_? Could have killed me for good. So could a dozen other things in that arena, including you.”

No one speaks.

She takes a deep, labored breath as her injury finishes healing and a wave of exhaustion threatens to topple her completely. “If you’ve got a problem with the double-edged sword the Traveler gave me, then take it up with me, personally, instead of whining to the coach like a _bitch_.”

The tension in the air feels like it may snap at any moment, to the point that it seems like the ship itself has gone silent to wait.

Then the Drifter starts cackling, letting out a whoop. “You've got guts, darlin’. I dig it.”

“Thanks.” She says, not sure how to otherwise respond that. Drifter says something else as she turns to leave, but it doesn’t register, and she doesn’t stop to see if the rest of her team is following.

The match had been worth it. She really _does_ feel better, in one sense, than she has since returning from the Reef—but she can feel a blackout rapidly approaching, and she knows she needs to sit down before she winds up dropping flat onto her face.

It would kind of ruin the verbal bitch slap she’d just given that titan by passing out immediately after, and her pride demands she have the last word.

Glyph flashes into sight to lead her back to her team’s initial meeting room. Once there, she finds the nearest object to lean against and then lowers herself carefully to a seat on the ground. Her expression twists with a wince at the myriad of aches and pains she doesn’t have the energy to heal.

“Don’t fall asleep yet, guardian,” Glyph says, flitting around in her face. It sounds conflicted, both proud of her and frustrated. She survived the match, but if it had a say she wouldn’t have participated in the first place.

“Gotta get paid, right?” It’s meant to be a joking, rhetorical question, but it falls pathetically flat. “Think it’ll be enough for me to afford that new ship I’ve been wanting?”

“No, and I don’t think you’d get around Zavala’s lockdown that way even if it were.”

She snorts and lets her eyes slip shut.

Glyph bumps into the side of her head and then proceeds to buzz in her ear like a bug to keep her awake. With a twitch of her lips, she lifts a hand and pretends to lightly swat at it. Tense disagreement on her participation here or not, it feels like their usual rapport had been restored.

Footsteps echo from down the hall, getting louder and more furious, and Quinn braces herself for whatever questioning she was about to be subject to. Someone skids to a halt right in front of her, agitated energy radiating from who she identifies, even through closed eyes, as Ash.

“That’s a ghost, you were _lying_.” Her voice is shrill and accusing, loud enough to drown out the slower footsteps that follow her into the room.

“You’re right,” Quinn mutters her expression twisting in response to the volume, “Glyph is _a_ ghost that chose to be my partner, but I wasn’t risen by it.”

“So you lost your first ghost?”

It had been too much to hope to skip the interrogation, she supposes. “I know someone who did, but no.”

“No guardian gains their power without a ghost. Strange as yours is, I have _witnessed_ your abilities.” Adebole’s voice joins Ash’s in demanding disbelief. “You must have one. Even if you had lost your first, your new ghost would be healing and powering you.”

For fuck’s sake.

Quinn lets out a sigh and silently begs the Drifter to show up and dole out payment already—she just wants to go home and _sleep_ , not answer demands for explanations on an existence that not even Ikora’s Hidden had been able to figure out.

Adebole’s tone grows more demanding when she refuses to respond. “Why are you on the floor?”

“Because I’m _tired_.”

“Combat doesn’t wear us out unless we’ve been fighting for, like, _weeks_. Nonstop.” Finn lifts an eyebrow at her. “Is your ghost _defective_?”

At this, Glyph flinches and retreats closer to her neck as though to hide. Quinn’s anger flares and her eyes narrow on Finn. “All my power comes from _me_. I’m draining my _own_ energy when I use my light. Glyph didn’t raise me, and I’ve never had a ghost that did. It’s my partner because it chose to be, and my weaknesses have _nothing_ to do with it.”

She’s treated it admittedly poorly recently, snapping at it when it’s shown her nothing but loyalty and concern, but despite her tired state, her threat in defense of it is loud and clear: _insult my ghost again and I’ll kick your ass_.

All three of them stare down at her, Ash and Finn keeping narrowed, disbelieving eyes focused on her and Glyph.

Adebole’s expression, on the other hand, shifts from the same suspicious disbelief to curious interest. “You are telling the truth. The difference is nearly indistinguishable, but Set says that ghost does not share your signature entirely.”

“Thank you,” she says, “for the vote of confidence.”

The other two glance at Adebole and then back at her.

“Wait,” Finn asks, their eyes wide, “you’re telling me you went _into that_ knowing you could die the easiest out of any of us?”

“I was feeling adventurous.” Her reply is sarcastic, and Glyph blips at her disapprovingly.

Finn’s let out a slow whistle. “Damn. That’s impressive.”

Stupid and risky, more like. Fun, but undeniably stupid. Regardless of what Glyph thought, Cayde would’ve approved.

“Sometimes takin’ a gamble is the only way to get things done.” Their attention shifts at the sound of the Drifter’s voice; he’s standing in the doorway they’d all come through rather than the one he’d come through earlier, and there’s a grin on his face like he’s laughing at a joke only he understands.

He spreads his arms wide, and four attache cases materialize in front of him. His ghost is still missing from the scene, as though it’s aiding in the melodramatic street magician act he’s trying to put on. Quinn wonders if it’s in on his persona, or if it’s just as shy as Glyph can be sometimes.

Expending more effort than she wants to admit to, she pushes herself to her feet and walks over to one of the cases with Glyph hovering close at her side. It scans the case and demats it into her inventory. Quickly. It wants to go home as much as she does.

“ _Your_ gamble,” Drifter says, pointing first at her and then taking a few steps to the side to indicate the other three, “paid off. Good work! I’ll make good use of those motes. Trust.”

“The motes _didn’t_ create those Primevals? They’re actually still in the banks?” Finn asks, incredulously.

His reply is far too easily given for what it implies. “Nah, just got their _attention_.”

Quinn shudders, the motion drawing his shrewd gaze to her. She tries to hold herself straight and steady, to make herself seem as assured as she has been every other time he’s fixed her with _that look_ until now, but she knows without a doubt that he can probably see right through the act. “So, what now?”

Ash bounces where she stands, the wild grin from earlier back on her face. “Yeah, what now? That was fun!”

“Got a taste for more, sister?” At Ash’s over enthusiastic nod, Drifter’s own grin widens. “Good, ‘cause there’s more where that came from. Ain’t gonna be all the time, but you come to Drifter next time you’re all hungry for a good fight.”

Quinn glances back at the other three, the four of them sharing looks and coming to the same silent conclusion.

“ _Woo_!” Ash cheers, oblivious to the fond smile on Finn’s face next to her while they watch Ash’s excited bouncing.

Adebole’s expression has gone flat, but he offers Quinn a nod that she returns.

Maybe they all got off on the wrong foot, and Quinn definitely can’t say they’re her favorite people, but they’d worked well together—after an initial road bump—and Gambit _had_ been fun. She wasn’t going to say no to working with them again.

Glyph can’t emote half as well as she can, but when she looks at it she can clearly see the gut-twisting expression of anxiety in the subdued spins of its shell and the slow blink of its eye.

It knows she’s willing to risk her life again just for the rush and escape.


	6. noumenon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> n. _(in philosophy) a thing as it is, independent of any conceptualization or perception by the human mind; a thing-in-itself, postulated by practical reasoning but existing in a condition which is, in principle, unknowable and unexperienceable._

Something is wrong.

Even before her eyes open, she knows something is wrong. It’s an overpowering gut feeling, a sickening twist in her stomach that comes into her awareness long before the blaring klaxons that seem both deafening and murky as though she’s hearing them underwater.

Fire crackles nearby. Her eyes blink open, and some system within the cell blocks in her sight spurts gouts of flame.

She knows this place.

The cell blocks are a dead giveaway, the re-purposed Fallen architecture utilized by the Reefborn Awoken her next clue. The Prison of Elders stretches high into the distance above her, so high it fades into a foggy haze. Funny, she doesn’t remember the Prison being _this_ big.

Dazed, Quinn pushes herself off the rubble she’d been laying in, looking around and wondering how she’d gotten here.

The Prison is in ruin, raging fires in pockets all around her as she takes in her surroundings. Pathways in the distance and high above are collapsing or twisted in the explosions and heat—under her feet the catwalk she’s on shudders, and she dives to the next only seconds before it collapses into the open chasm below.

There isn’t an enemy in sight. The intact blocks are empty, and she can see no explosions, hears no gunfire or angry roars from the Prison’s usual Cabal, Hive, and Fallen captives. Just the fire and echoing alarms and an odd _shunk, shunk, shunk_ through the unnatural chaotic stillness of the air.

Her throat constricts with unease. “Petra?” She calls, uncertainly, wondering why Glyph isn’t with her and why she isn’t armed. “Nik? Kel? Cayde?”

No one answers her.

They’re supposed to be stopping a massive prison break. They need to be in contact, need to be coordinating—why aren’t they answering?

With urgency, she heads for the nearest bulkhead. The door is caught on a sheet of metal driven violently through it, mechanisms still attempting to close and resulting in the odd noise she had noticed before.

She slips through the opening with a warp, moving blind without Glyph to guide her through the damaged cell blocks and levels—down, down, down. Calls go out for her allies at intervals, her voice growing more frantic with the persistent silence that answers her.

“ _This is a Cayde riff in 6,_ ” she hears Cayde say from somewhere ahead of her, and her heart jumps into her throat for a reason she can’t identify, “ _watch for the changes and, uh...try and keep up_.”

The teasing statement that’s just so _Cayde_ should make her laugh. An echo of her own laughter rings off the walls that blur past her, but her mouth doesn’t move, and all she feels is an inexplicable dread. Her skin prickles with déjà vu.

All but sprinting through the halls now, she recklessly leaps down through gaps in the block levels to reach the end faster—the end? Why does she think it’s the _end_? Why does it _feel_ like one?

Her footsteps make no sound as she runs. The blaring klaxons have faded. Fire roars silently around her, explosions devoid of riotous noise.

In the massive chasm that spans the center of the Prison, the command center from the top of the structure, spouting fire and leaving shattered debris falling after it, plummets so quickly and so silently she only knows it happens because it’s happened before.

Her panic spikes, realization crashing through her like a tidal wave.

She’s not moving fast enough, and her muscles are already straining with how hard she’s pushing herself.

The block ahead of her is barricaded with flame and rubble, so she changes course and dives through a break in one of the cells into the innards of the Prison. Ahead of her is an open gap between rows and rows of cryopods and individual cells tower above and below, the grated bridge she’s on collapsing into the dark below.

Without hesitation, she throws herself off of it and she falls,

          falls,

 _falls_.

The drop should break her legs, shatter every bone in her body and leave her crippled or dead, but instead she falls to her knees with shaking limbs, swearing at herself for the time she spends stunned. _She needs to keep going_.

“Cayde?” She calls out, frantic now as she pushes herself to her feet and stumbles forward.

Turning down a long hallway, she sprints directly for the bulkhead that strikes her with dreadful familiarity. Faster, _faster_ —but the hall stretches and _stretches_ and for every step she takes it seems she only moves an inch ahead.

Muffled sounds of a raging fight reach her from beyond the door, the familiar cadence of an unmistakable gun and feral shrieks and howls making her heart pound with terror.

She’s so close. She can make it this time.

A silent sob bubbles in her throat at the sound of a guardian’s explosive burst of charged light.

“ _Help me out here, little buddy_ ,” Cayde’s voice, unsteady and weak, comes after a delay.

The door opens as she reaches it, time seeming to slow as she takes in the sight before her. Fiery rubble of the central command station from the top of the prison, the destroyed cell blocks, the eight hulking figures of the Scorned Barons on the landing above, and all the scrap-armored bodies of what had once been Fallen.

Cayde, standing in the center of it all. His back is to her and his shoulders are slumped with exhaustion. He holds his left hand out as his side; Sundance appears in a flicker within his upturned palm, her white and yellow shell shimmering like a beacon in the dim light.

Quinn bolts forward, opening her mouth to cry out in warning, but no sound leaves her.

A single, deafening shot echoes.

Sundance shatters.

Light explodes outwards from her destroyed shell. Quinn skids to a halt, holding her arms up to block the blinding light that washes over her and leaves her sick with despair.

When the wash of light fades and she lowers her arms, she’s met with another dim interior, fluorescent lights lining the edges of sharp angles, grated metal catwalks, and solid bulkheads. It’s some kind of bay, stretching into the distance, so far she can’t see the end.

She’s in a ship. It feels familiar, but she can’t place why.

Farther down from the raised catwalk she stands on is technology she’s also familiar with—a Vex gate, altered from what she’s seen on Io, Nessus, Mercury, and Venus. It’s empty, but she feels a power radiating from it that doesn’t belong.

What’s it doing here, on a ship?

“You gonna go or not, darlin’?” The Drifter’s voice cuts through the low thrum of ship engines muffled by the hull of the ship, and though he hadn’t been there a moment ago she’s somehow not surprised when he steps up next to her.

 _Go?_ She thinks, _Go where?_

But she knows what he means. She’s not sure how, but she does.

Anger pulses through her as Sundance’s death replays in her mind, as the distant feeling of Cayde dying in her arms brushes like a phantom over her skin. If she jumps through that gate, will it take her to Uldren? Why does _he_ have it?

“Don’t let his death weigh on you.” He says, voice echoing more than it rightfully should within the acoustics of the bay. “Somewhere out there, someone’s got a bullet with your name on it.”

She frowns and looks to her right, but the Drifter is gone as though he’d never been there at all.

Orange light flickers from a hall near the rear of the bay behind her, warm and almost inviting. It’s tempting to go that way instead, but—

—her eyes return to the gate, and with clenched fists she takes a step forward. Then another, and one more, until she breaks into a full run down the catwalk and leaps through.

Space dissolves around her and the ship vanishes, her vision going blank and the feeling of nothingness gripping at her limbs and pulling, _pulling_ , trying to stop her from moving forward. Trying to trap her in the empty in-between of existence and nonexistence.

She fights it, and with an eruption of color and sensation reality coalesces around her.

The new space she finds herself in is a direct contrast to the dark interior of the ship, open and blindingly bright.

She’s standing in a flat open desert of pure white, hard and unnaturally geometric stone, dusty ground bleached of all color and spanning far and wide. The sky is clear, dark blue and sparkling brilliantly with stars. On the horizon is a massive planet, almost entirely eclipsing a star that peeks over its edge.

It’s utterly, unsettlingly silent around her. Even when she steps forward, expecting the sound of sand sifting or stone crunching under her boot, she hears nothing.

Ahead of her is a massive spire, an inverted pyramid made of the same snow-white stone that makes up the thin path before her. A thin sheen of gold cuts a sharp line through its rigid geometry, odd circular symbols with lines cut through them engraved into the surface.

It floats above the ground, and Quinn finds herself drawn towards it.

**how did it come to be here?**

**_WHAT A THIN LINE IT TREADS._ **

Her steps falter, the words an amalgamate of voices within her head that sends a violent shiver up her spine. Whatever spoke feels vast and unfathomable, beyond her understanding. Incomprehensible, speaking in tongues that she shouldn’t but somehow does understand.

The whisper of claws, so razor-sharp she imagines they can cut through the very fabric of reality, brushes across her back, and she goes rigid.

_Run._

Inhaling sharply, she moves forward and puts on as much speed as she can, trying not to think about how whatever it is following her easily keeps pace. _Faster, please, go faster, she needs to go **faster**_.

**_c a n i t s e e?_ **

**++NO, IT IS STILL BLIND++**

A massive pit appears before her, right below the point of the inverted spire. What is she running from? What is she running _towards_? Her chest heaves with exertion, boots still utterly silent in the empty landscape.

The only sound she hears, save for the terrifyingly eldritch voices in her mind, is the howling vortex coming from within the pit ahead.

**_W H A T W I L L I T C H O O S E?_ **

She leaps from the edge of the pit and falls into the hungry whirlpool of light or darkness below, the current dragging her violently under, filling her lungs and drowning her with viscous eternity.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Her eyes open and she sucks in a desperate gasp of air, her heart racing and skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

Above her is no roaring flame, no broken Prison, no ship bay, and no impossibly silent alien world—just the bland, familiar sight of her bedroom ceiling. A fan rotates lazily, the soft whir of it only noticeable thanks to the quiet of the room.

She stares at the spinning blades and counts her heartbeats until they’ve slowed to a normal pace, letting her eyes close; her hand lifts from under the warmth of her blanket and fingers thread into her hair.

Is she going to open her eyes to the sight of a beaten and battered Cayde again? Will he be standing in her room, blaming her for not reaching him in time? For not _helping_ him? For not doing what she should be doing—for not hunting Uldren down?

Her stomach churns.

This isn’t the first time she’s dreamt of the Prison of Elders and not the first time she’s relived Cayde’s death, but it hurts just as keenly as the first. She swallows and fights to push away the despair curling like black smoke in her lungs.

 _Don’t cry. You’ve cried enough_.

She still hasn’t decided whether or not watching Sundance’s final operational recording had been a good idea. Was it better to have never seen how bravely and how hard Cayde had fought in his last moments, or having seen it and knowing that in the end it had all been for nothing?

The nightmare always ended there, right as Sundance died. This is the first time she’s ever experienced more beyond that bright flash of a dying ghost’s light, and she’s not sure she likes it any more than the rest.

It’s just stress. She’s driven herself to the point of exhaustion between weeks of restless sleep and unhealthy loss of appetite and weight—combine that with Gambit and willingly subjecting herself to the Taken while competing in it, all of it is nothing more than stress induced delirium.

Already the Drifter’s words and the faceless voices she had heard are fading, the images growing indistinct and murky. Just nightmares, nothing more. Kel had told her to ignore them, and so she does.

She doesn’t even remember getting back to the Tower after leaving the Drifter’s ship yesterday, let alone making it back to the team’s apartment or even into bed. Is she still—yep, still wearing her pants and the sleeveless undersuit from her armor. At least she’d had the sense to ditch the armored coat and boots before climbing into bed.

The hope that driving herself to the point of exhaustion with Gambit would keep her nightmares at bay is apparently falling short. She’s already pushing herself beyond her limits, and if even four Gambit matches in the three weeks since the first isn’t doing it, how much harder is she going to have to force herself before it _does_?

Arriving home with no memory of the trip and more than a handful of mortal close calls in just five matches; Glyph would have a _fit_ if she tries to push for more frequent matches. It hasn’t stopped trying to talk her out of participating, but its efforts had gradually lessened over the last few weeks.

It doesn’t like the game or the Drifter, and she knows that every time she steps onto the Derelict it’s terrified for both hers and its own life, but every time she tells herself that she should stop—if for no other reason than for _its_ well-being—she can’t bring herself to do it.

It’s _helping_ , even if not in the way she had hoped.

While she’s never been a slouch in the field, she’s starting to see why Shaxx utilizes his Crucible as a training ground in addition to the morale-boosting spectator sport. After just a few Gambit matches, she can feel her skills honing. She’s getting quicker at thinking on her feet, her reflexes improving through necessity, her aim sharper and more instinctual. 

She still hasn’t figured out how to recreate the intoxicating rush of power from her invasion in the first match, or even what it _was_ , but aside from all of that, the competition was helping her feel better.

Her smiles are still paper thin and nowhere near as bright as she could manage before, but they’re coming more frequently. The Taken, too, are bothering her less and less with every match. They no longer send her into fits of panic, and she’s able to brush off the skin-crawling discomfort of their presence easier.

The latter two effects are likely the only reason Glyph’s attempts at talking her out of the game had lost their vehemence and it had stopped threatening to tell Nik or Kel.

“Was it the same?”

Her eyes open and she turns her head to the side, seeing Glyph floating above the surface of her nightstand and blinking at her worriedly. Letting out a breath, she sits up and swings her legs off the side of the bed. “Yeah. I never make it in time.”

“You know it’s not your fault, right?” It says, drifting closer. “There wasn’t anything any of us could have done.”

“I guess.” She winces at the flat response. She wishes she could at least _fake_ not being so cynical for her ghost’s sake, but she disagrees—she could have been faster, could have gotten there quickly enough to shield them and maybe Cayde would still be here.

It stays quiet, waiting, but when she doesn’t offer more it fills the silence. “There was more to it this time, wasn’t there?”

She hesitates before answering; telling it outright that the Drifter had shown up likely isn’t going to do much more than provoke its ire at him. “After Sundance died I was on a ship. Then I jumped through a Vex gate and was on...I think a different planet. Some kind of big, white desert with a huge floating pyramid and a pit that I jumped into. And voices.”

“Voices?” It blinks, shell spinning in surprise. “You mean aside from—?”

She nods.

“What did they say?” It asks.

Would’ve been a great question to ask her a few minutes ago when the nightmare was still fresh in her mind; her brow furrows, and she strains to think of what she had heard as she ran through that strange, alien planet. “Something about being blind, I think. Probably just my subconscious telling me to knock it off, right?”

It lets out a disapproving beep at the wry smile she gives it, flitting over to the other side of the room when she stands to change out of her armor and into something casual. “You already know I don’t like what you’ve been up to lately.”

“Do you have any better ideas for how I should kill time while Prince _Fuckwit_ is out causing problems we could easily put an end to?” She demands.

It says nothing for long enough that she shakes her head and resumes dressing. “The Festival starts today.” It says, quietly.

Her breath catches. She’s seen the banners and decorations being strung up over the past few days, multi-colored string lights and altars of candles set up around the Tower. She’s been trying to avoid thinking about it. “I’m really not in the mood for cider and jokes.”

“You can at least participate in the events and games.” Glyph follows her as she leaves the room, its voice insistent.

A haunted forest is usually set up within a large garden down in the City, and many guardians and civilians alike participate by running around with gaudy or funny masks. There are parties, contests, and hunters gather to tell scary stories to small crowds. Candy and laughs are traded, and sometimes a game of ‘keep away’ happens when a hunter appears with one of the soccer balls that keep inexplicably popping into existence in the Tower.

Or engrams—Cryptarch Rahool had been sent into a _fit_ a few years back when he’d found a group of hunters and titans playing hacky-sack with an engram he had yet to decrypt.

None of it sounds palatable to her, and at the very least she knows she’s in good company. Kel hadn’t ever shown interest in participating in the Festival for as long as she’s known him.

“I don’t want to.”

Glyph huffs. “Cayde wouldn’t want you to mo—”

Someone leaps out in front of them, yelling and waving their arms wildly, with a ghastly mask of a Fallen vandal covering their face. Both Quinn and Glyph freeze in surprise, blinking silently at the figure.

“Hi, Quinn.” Luke says from behind the mask, voice cheery as he wiggles his fingers. His blue-shelled ghost, Gibson, bounces and laughs at their reaction behind Luke’s shoulder.

Her expression falls flat. “Hi, Luke.” She steps around him and proceeds into the living area.

Kel sits on the couch by the coffee table, one of his sniper rifles partially disassembled and parts set in an orderly fashion on the table’s surface; he’s still the only one on the team that manually cleans and cares for his guns, and they had yet to figure out why.

Near the front door stand Nyx and Roland, the former fiddling with what looks like a mask featuring Rahool’s face and the latter standing near her looking surly.

“Festival starts today!” Luke falls into step with her as she moves into the kitchen, voice muffled until he lifts the mask onto the top of his head. “You’re coming with, right? We’re gonna try to spook Ikora. Well—I am. And then we’re gonna go check out the forest.”

“I’d like to avoid a bigass shotgun to the face, but thanks for the offer.” Quinn replies, ignoring him as she looks for something to eat. An apple’s good enough, right? She doesn’t feel like putting forth the effort to make anything.

She probably should—she’s tiny enough already without the unhealthy weight loss. It’s gotten better over the last few weeks, but she’s still too thin for her own tastes.

Her shoulders lift in a shrug at the thought and she bites into the apple, still studiously ignoring Luke as she leaves the kitchen. She’ll find something to eat out in the commercial area later.

He follows her, looking dejected by the response, and she tries not to feel bad. “ _C’monnnn_. Even Roland is coming!”

“Not by choice.” The aforementioned hunter grouses, leaning away from Nyx when the exo swats at him.

Nyx huffs with a flash of her jaw light and returns to putting the final touches on her mask with Kessler’s help. “Don’t be such a grouch. You’re worse than Kessler.” Her ghost, in retaliation, smacks into the side of her head with a metallic _tink_ , and she laughs.

Quinn drops down into an armchair near Kel. “I don’t really feel up to it, Luke.”

Across the room, Roland’s dark eyes narrow on her at her response, and she silently begs him to not mention that she’s been borrowing his ship to leave the City. A sigh of relief is barely bit down by her when he drops the suspicious look.

“Okay,” Luke sighs dramatically, slouching as he steps over to where Nyx and Roland wait. “But if you change your mind, you _have_ to let us know!”

“Sure.” She has no plans to change her mind.

Satisfied with the bland answer, Luke leaves. Nyx slips her mask on, grabs hold of Roland’s cloak—he’s just like Kel, never seeming to enjoy being out of his armor—and then drags him out the door with her, leaving just her and Kel alone in the now quiet apartment.

Echo, with her black and pink-spotted shell, appears next to Kel after that, floating down towards the weapon parts Kel is meticulously putting back together; she catches sight of Glyph floating next to Quinn’s head.

Both ghosts freeze—and then with a bright chirp, Echo darts towards Glyph. The two of them take off, flitting rapidly around the apartment in a ghost version of a game of tag.

Kel pauses with his hand hovering over a piece of his rifle, joining Quinn in watching the two ghosts play with an air of amusement. “They’re more in the holiday spirit than you are,” he says after a length.

She looks over at him, watching him work. He’s quiet, patient, and much warmer and more open than he had been once upon a time, but his entire demeanor is still reserved and careful. She frowns. “I don’t really have a lot to be spirited about.”

“You’re alive,” he points out, glancing up at her with an inscrutable look. “You’ve got friends. Your team. A companion that cares about you even though it’s under no obligation to be yours. That’s nothing to be spirited about?”

“Cayde’s dead.”

He hums low in bitter agreement, slapping the rifle’s magazine into place. “He’s dead, and nothing’s going to change that. Not dwelling on it, not hunting down the man that killed him, and not hiding from people that care about you or hoping that something _else_ will erase the fact it happened.”

She goes still at the look on his face. Does he know? It shouldn’t bother her if he does—it’s not like he handled Gil’s death any better, from what she’s heard.

“I’m just...I need the space, Kel. You should know what that’s like better than anyone,” she finally says, using the excuse of throwing her finished apple in a nearby waste bin to break his stare.

Hadn’t he disappeared for a _month_ after Gil was killed in action? Longer than that, still, since he’d left immediately after helping rescue her from the Dreadnaught. It had been two _years_ since anyone had seen or heard from him when he finally returned during the Red Legion invasion.

His lips twitch as though he knows what she’s thinking, and he reaches for the last remaining piece of his rifle. “Distance can be more self destructive than reaching out for help. There’s a difference between isolation and grieving. Took me almost two thousand years to learn it.”

Glyph and Echo stop their game and drift back into the room. Echo flits down to Kel when he props it up on the floor for her to scan and return to his inventory. She lets out a soft trill and then flashes out of sight.

“Take my advice as your friend,” Kel stands, looking down at her with an expression that softens the usually hard edges of his face, “and don’t wait that long to figure it out yourself.”

She blinks at him as he moves for the door, speechless not only because she has no idea what he means but also because of the open display of emotion. Even when with her, that _doesn’t_ happen. “Does the Vanguard need your help again?”

He pauses at the question. “No. I’m going to go enjoy the Festival.” His features are obscured by the helmet Echo transmats over his head, and he leaves without saying anything else.

She’s not sure how long she sits there in stunned silence, trying to process everything that had just happened. Between his advice, the studying look he’d given her, and then admitting he’s going out to enjoy the festivities—

In all the years she’s known him, Kel’s gone out of his way to avoid nearly all social events within the City, to the point where he grabs as many solo operations as possible to get away from the City during them.

He _still_ keeps his distance from people, disappearing at infrequent intervals to be alone—where the hell does he get off, telling her to stop avoiding people?

Why is everyone so insistent that she just stop being so upset that Cayde is gone? That she needs to stop dwelling on it and go laugh and enjoy things as they are, as though nothing is wrong? How _can_ she when the bastard that killed him is still on the loose?

“Quinn.” Glyph’s voice draws her out of her suddenly furious thoughts just in time for her to realize that her face is wet.

She lifts a hand and swipes away the tears that had fallen, upset with _Kel_ and upset with this _stupid_ fucking Festival and pissed at _herself_ for crying because she’s angry—who the fuck cries because they’re _angry_?

“I was doing it again,” she snaps, her voice cracking. “I know.”

Damnit, and she told herself that she would stop lashing out at her friends. Inhaling deeply to try and steady herself—to no avail—she opens her mouth to offer it yet another apology.

Glyph is only staring at her silently, shell twitching slowly without any indication of agitation or hurt, and the apology dies in her throat. She sniffs and blinks away the tears threatening to build up in her eyes as she stares back, not sure what to say and unable to guess what it’s thinking.

It looks away from her for a moment as though in deep thought. “Open your hand?”

The request catches her off guard. Frowning, she lifts her hand and holds it out in front of Glyph. A vision of Sundance briefly overlays Glyph’s white and blue shell, and she closes her eyes to force it away—they open again when a light, solid weight drops into her open palm.

It’s the Drifter’s jade coin.

“I can’t force you to stop playing Gambit, and I don’t know how to make things better or help you move on.” Glyph says quietly, open warmth and support through their odd bond accompanying the earnest look it’s giving her. “I don’t think Gambit or the Drifter have the answers you’re trying to find, but it seems like it’s at least helping to clear your head. I’ve got your back. No matter what.”

Her anger fades entirely, and she presses her lips into a thin line to fight back an equally powerful but opposite swell of emotion. She’s so tired of these ups and downs, but she’ll gladly take this softer melancholy over the restless fury. “I don’t deserve a friend like you. You know that, right?”

Glyph’s attitude lifts and it bobs once, shell spinning with cheer. “Yes, well, you’re stuck with me. So, deal with it.”

“I’d give you a hug right now if I could.” She laughs weakly.

“It’s the thought that counts,” it says, upbeat demeanor dimming slightly. “Just...try to let your team back in, okay? They’re all worried about you, like I am.”

The small smile that had made its way onto her face fades. Her eyes drop to the coin and she twists it between her fingers, trying and failing not to question the statement.

If they’re so worried about her, they certainly aren’t acting like it. Luke is as optimistic and cheerful as ever, Nyx hasn’t bothered to ask her how she’s doing, Nik is wary of her, she doesn’t expect Roland to change enough to ever feel comfortable checking on her state of being, and Kel had just _lectured_ her.

They’re all carrying on as though nothing had changed after the Prison of Elders. Any initial upset they’d shown when Zavala had first put his foot down is gone. It’s like none of them _care_ that Cayde’s killer is running around, well-deserved retribution and justice completely ignored.

Is she the only one that _won’t_ shrug and put it behind her?

If they’re so worried about her but won’t do a damn thing to bring justice to Cayde’s murderers, then they’d damn well find a way to convince Zavala to allow her to join Petra in the hunt for Uldren and the Barons. She’ll do it _alone_.

The Vanguard hiding his death from the City is insult enough before letting his killers run free without consequence. Ikora had been right—refusing to do anything is nothing but cowardice.

She stops worrying the coin in her hand and pinches the edges between her thumb and index finger, lifting it up to the light and staring at it with her thoughts twisting. The Drifter had made an appearance in a dream that, until now, hasn’t changed since she’d first begun to have it.

Is something significant about that, or is she just a lost idiot desperately searching for more meaning to keep herself occupied? She’s not sure.

Curling her fingers around the coin, she stands. She’d like nothing more than to avoid going out into the Tower for the next week straight until the Festival ends, but just as it had when she’d gone hunting for the source of Gambit, her mind had fixated and she needs to get it out of her system.

Glyph blinks at her as she moves past it, following her out as she leaves the apartment behind and makes her way down the stairs to the exit. “Should I let Luke know you changed your mind?”

“No.” Her steps falter when she steps out of the block and a small breeze alerts her to how quickly winter is approaching—she had apparently slept all day, as well, the sun having already fallen and doing nothing for the rising chill.

The fact that the others had left to join the festivities should have been her first clue how many hours she had wasted asleep considering most Festival of the Lost events didn’t occur until later in the evening.

She adjusts her jacket and continues onward. “I don’t want to participate.”

“Then why—?” It blinks, then, when it realizes where her sudden energy and drive had come from, it flits ahead and keeps pace with her, floating backwards so it can stare. “You’re going to talk to _him_?”

“You said you weren’t going to stop me from doing it,” she points out.

Its facets retract around its eye in a sour look. “I said I _couldn’t_ , not that I wasn’t going to _try_.”

“Why are you so sure I should be avoiding him?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” it replies dryly, slowing and flashing out of sight, ‘ _maybe because he runs an illicit activity without Consensus approval that can and probably_ has _gotten guardians killed. You didn’t trust him when you first met him, why do you_ now _?’_

When had she ever said she _trusts_ him?

The grouse remains a silent thought that she’s sure Glyph can still read within her, but she also has no answer for it.

At some point over the course of a few weeks and a handful of Gambit matches and short interactions, she had decided that—weird and smarmy attitude aside—the Drifter has no malicious intent. A bit detached from things he _shouldn’t_ be, but she doesn’t get the sense that he’s got some kind of evil archvillain plot schemed up like Glyph seems to think he does.

It doesn’t press the issue when she remains silent, but it does leave a few pointed blips of clear disapproval in her head as she makes her way through the Tower towards Drifter’s hidden corner of the bazaar.

No one pays her any mind as she weaves through the crowd gathered for the Festival and ducks into the dark alley.

Drifter’s not in his usual spot when she arrives, and the doors that usually stand ajar behind him are closed. “Glyph, is he in there?”

‘ _We’re in a light-cloaking field._ ’ It replies flatly.

Her nose wrinkles. “You could tell he was a guardian when we first met him.”

A huff is its response. ‘ _No, he’s not in there_.’

She knows he can’t be here _all_ the time—unlike Shaxx, he doesn’t have 55-33 frames to monitor his matches. Still, he’s never been absent any other times she’s stopped by to check in for  match. _Gee_ , she thinks to herself, tone deadpan even within her own head, _it’s almost like he’s hiding from people_.

Alright, so Glyph may have a point.

She leaves the alley, stopping when back out in the bazaar and looking around at the people, guardians and civilians alike, happily chatting with each other and horsing around under the influence of the event’s good cheer while masked figures run amok, occasionally stopping to trade candy or jokes with others.

She’s not sure what to do. Go look for the Drifter? He may be back on the Derelict and hosting another match of Gambit somewhere in the system for all she knows. She can return to the apartment and just go back to sleep, but she’d already slept for what had likely been more than ten hours.

Candles and multi-colored lights bathe the Tower and festival decorations in cheerful atmosphere. Eva Levante had once told her that the Festival of the Lost and the Dawning are meant to commemorate lost loved ones and lift spirits, a reminder to all that in the darkest of times, a smile and some cheer can make all the difference.

Everyone else seems infected with smiles and cheer. Quinn is not.

Glyph hadn’t finished its statement earlier, but she knows what it had been about to say—and she knows that it’s right. Cayde _wouldn’t_ like seeing her mope like this, but she honestly can’t seem to find her good cheer.

If she was a moon, Cayde had been her sunlight.

“I was never fond of this particular holiday.”

She twists around, startled, and finds Ikora Rey standing next to her. The tails of her white and purple robes shift in the autumn breeze and her dark skin shimmers in the light of the festival decorations. She stands tall, her hands clasped behind her back and her dark eyes roving over the gathered, happy crowd with a muted kind of contentment.

“Perhaps it’s just me,” she continues, the words she speaks smooth and carefully selected as with nearly everything else about her, “but trying to pay respect to those lost with pranks and candy seems… irreverent. And we have lost so _many_ this past year and a half.”

Quinn says nothing, standing next to the Warlock Vanguard and crossing her arms to ward off the chill.

A small smile appears on Ikora’s face. “But everyone honors death differently. This was Cayde’s favorite holiday. ‘ _Best way to honor someone is to keep smiling_ ,’ he’d say.” She pauses, the smile turning impish. “The year before last, I believe he gave Eris a box of licorice, but it had celery inside instead. She didn’t think it was nearly as funny as he did, but then again he _had_ been wearing a mask of her at the time.”

Her expression twists in bittersweet humor; she remembers him telling her about it. He’d been laughing uproariously as he recounted it to her and a few other hunters down at the _Tipsy Sparrow_. It _hadn’t_ been that funny, but his joy over it had been infectious and they’d all been laughing, too.

Cayde had that effect on people.

And she’ll never hear his laughter again.

Swallowing thickly, she tips her head back to stare up at the lights strung around the higher levels of the Tower, pretending the sting in her eyes is from how bright they are. “Did you need something, Ikora?”

Ikora steps forward and turns so that she’s in Quinn’s line of sight, projecting authority that tells her it’s time to pay attention. “I’ve been made aware that you’ve been breaking lockdown to leave Earth.”

Quinn goes deathly still.

“Zavala has yet to find out.” There’s no threat in her stance or tone. Just cool, detached fact. “I won’t tell you not to disobey the Vanguard Commander’s direct order, but I want you to be aware that the Vanguard _cannot_ offer you aid should your ventures off-world go beyond… what it is you’ve been up to.”

She looks away, but Quinn gets the feeling that she isn’t quite finished yet, so she stays quiet.

“I meant what I said when you and your fireteam returned from the Reef. Refusing to do anything about Cayde’s death is cowardice, plain and simple. I’m bound by my duty, but I want justice for him as much as you do.” She says, fixing her with a heavy look. “Should you choose to seek it out against clear orders, just know it will be _without_ the support of the Vanguard and the City.”

In other words, Quinn would be completely on her own. She’d be going rogue, and if Uldren’s death brought with it the threat of war with the remnants of the Reefborn Awoken, she wouldn’t be offered refuge within the City’s walls ever again.

She’d figured as much already, but having it laid out so plainly… 

Unable to find words, Quinn simply offers Ikora a nod of acknowledgement.

Ikora returns it, her expression softening around the edges and her eyes turning contemplative. After a lengthy pause, the words she speaks are given with a melancholic, motherly tone. “Be careful of how far into your grief you fall, guardian. Some lines, when crossed...you can’t come back from them. There are those that will take offense and won’t care what your reasoning is for taking that step.”

Silently, she watches as Ikora steps away and disappears into the crowd.

Then her eyes blink wide and the crowd falls out of focus.

 _Should your ventures off-world go… beyond what it is you’ve been up to_. Ikora’s words imply that she knows exactly what Quinn _hasn’t_ been getting up to, despite the fact that she has no way of knowing that she _isn’t_ high-tailing it to the Reef to hunt the Awoken Prince.

Does she have one of her Hidden assigned to her and reporting back?

“Glyph,” she speaks up quietly as her ghost flashes into sight, “have you noticed anyone following us lately?”

It blinks in confusion. “I don’t think so. Why?”

She doesn’t answer, her mind whirling with confusion. There’s no way what Ikora said could be mistaken—the Warlock Vanguard’s speech is always methodical and carefully constructed, even when steeped in emotion and not cold logic.

But if Ikora knows she’s been breaking Vanguard protocol and orders by bypassing her lockdown using another guardian’s ship, the question becomes: why hasn’t Zavala been made aware of it?

“Earth to guardian?” Glyph says, bobbing within her line of sight.

“Sorry, buddy. I’m…” She blinks her daze away and looks at it, but her mind is elsewhere. She needs to talk to the Drifter, still, but it’ll have to wait until she can find him. “Can you get in contact with Luke and find out where I can meet up with the others?”

Its shell spins with joy and it floats alongside her as she wanders into the crowd.

Whatever affirmative it gives her is lost as her focus dips out again, her sudden change in plans having less to do with how she feels about it and more to do with wanting something to pass the time while she sorts through her thoughts.

If Ikora knows about her leaving the planet, does she also know about the Drifter and his illicit competition? If she does, why hasn’t the Vanguard already put a stop to it?

_There are those that will take offense and won’t care what your reasoning is for taking that step._

What is that warning even supposed to _mean_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, im alive! lotta stuff has been happening life-wise. i do, however, have around ~~13~~ chapters written ahead for this, so don't worry too much about long breaks. barring something catastrophic, this one just came from A Lot happening At Once. see y'all next chapter!


	7. uncanny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adj. _having or seeming to have a supernatural or inexplicable basis; beyond the ordinary or normal; uncomfortably strange_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my only excuse for the posting gap: new job, very stress. here's a longer chapter to make up for it. and more drifterman to boot!

Taking Kel’s advice to heart when she feels so heavy isn’t easy, but she tries anyway. She tries to allow herself back into the welcoming company of her friends and fireteam, to enjoy the festivities and smiles and laughs.

Luke manages to dredge up the ghost of a smile from her a few times and takes a clear sort of victory in it, despite how small and fragile it is, and she feels something warm and fond in her chest when she meets up with Nikon and Leilani down in the City. Even Roland’s grouchy company seems to ease the weight on her shoulders, albeit briefly.

Try as she might, though, she still feels distant, _apart_ , and it frustrates the hell out of her.

Fuck’s sake, _Roland_ , the perpetual misanthropic asshole, seems as though he’s enjoying himself and feels like he’s part of the group rather than a side feature of it. Shocking, considering Nik still regularly threatens to throttle him.

Those threats, ever present since Roland initially joined, have lost most of their edge and menace. Nikon is leaving his grudges and pain behind, clearly. Why can’t she? What’s the trick?

She wants so badly to be able to enjoy herself, to shelve her anger even for just a day, but the knowledge that Cayde should be here but isn’t and won’t ever be again haunts her. Every time Luke cracks a joke, she imagines Cayde throwing something even funnier back and the two of them devolving into cackles at their own terrible senses of humor.

The pressure of her melancholy persists even with three days of trying so hard, and Quinn decides that there just isn’t a damn thing that’s going to lift her spirits until Uldren has been brought to justice. Still, all she can do is stand here and fucking _wait_ , hoping that Petra can accomplish the thing she’s being barred from.

Nothing is truly stopping her. Ikora had all but given her the unofficial go-ahead to join Petra on the hunt…

But as she watches Nyx chase Luke around with a broom, the maintenance frame it belongs to shuffling around after them slowly in distress and trying to retrieve its tool, while Leilani laughs and Nik smiles and Roland tries and fails to hide a huff of laughter behind his hand–she feels unbearably torn.

She thinks of the Drifter, so free from ties to people and places and things to the point that he’d abandoned any semblance of even a name, and she wonders what advice he might give. Is she really willing to give up everything, like he had, just to ensure Cayde’s murder doesn’t go unpunished?

If it had been the other way around, if _she_ had been killed and if Cayde were the one in her place, what would he have done?

The thought makes her chest tighten with more pain and she swallows thickly; he’d already lost his best friend to a Fallen mercenary, and he’d told her bittersweet stories about the kind of hijinks he and Andal would get up to decades before she had ever come into the picture. He’d said more than once that he’d wished she could have met him.

It’s some kind of cruel irony that Cayde had been killed by Fallen separatists and their would-be king.

Eyes are heavy on her, and she looks up from where her own had gone distant. Kel is watching her, the only other one in the group remaining apart from the celebration even though he, true to his word the other day, actually participates when the Vanguard doesn’t call him in.

She’s never felt uncomfortable under Kel’s careful scrutiny, but for the first time, the impassive blankness of his helmet leaves her feeling laid bare and unhappy about it. “What?”

“I heard from Petra,” he says, simply, and she stiffens. “They’re still tracking Uldren and the Barons.”

Her eyes drift over to the rest of the fireteam.

Roland tips back some kind of cider being handed out by Festival hosts and makes a face at it. Nyx has apparently given the broom back to the poor frame just doing its job and is now speaking quietly with Nikon, watching as Luke in his Vandal mask chases around a bunch of kids with Leilani. Both of them are making noises that could barely be construed as Fallen language, and the kids are laughing.

None of the rest of her team seem the slightest bit off balance like she suddenly is.

“Have you told the others?” She asks, though she already knows the answer.

“No. Zavala told me and Ikora to keep it confidential.”

 _Confidential_? She thinks, fury sparking. After what he’s denied to her and her team already, is he trying to keep it from them? To stop them from being emboldened to chase the lead and leave the City behind? It’s a spiteful thought and she knows it–subterfuge just isn’t Zavala’s style–but after the War, he’s been obsessively paranoid, pulling so many ranks of guardians closer to the City, and…

She presses her lips into a thin line and drags a hand through her hair, inhaling deeply. _Justifications, justifications_. She’s still looking.

Had Petra sent other messages that he’d also kept from them?

“Why share it with _me_?” Kel should know better. With everything she’s struggling with, being reminded of what she could be out there doing, Vanguard’s blessing or not, he’s just adding fuel to a fire that she’s trying her best to keep contained.

He turns away from her, gaze settling on the group. “Because you deserve to know. Someone is out there trying to earn justice for Cayde.”

And it should be _her_. Gritting her teeth, she crosses her arms, her fingers white-knuckled where they dig into her skin. “I’m still thinking about saying damn the City and leaving to help. Ikora told me the other day she wouldn’t stop me from doing it.”

“I know.” His response momentarily douses her frustration, and she blinks at him; he’s still looking away, unmoving. “She asked me whether she should after Zavala told us to keep quiet.”

“And you thought it was a good idea? Do you _know_ how hard I’ve been fighting _not to_?”

“I did and I do. It’s up to you to decide what happens next.” He’d been silent enough to make her wonder if he was going to reply at all. “Ikora and I both know that no one, not even Zavala, is going to be able to stop you if you choose to follow that path.”

There’s another long silence, and as with Ikora, Quinn knows he’s not done, so she stays quiet. When he does speak up again, he sounds weary. “She wanted to make sure you knew the consequences. I want you to know the choice is there.”

“But you don’t think I should.” She grouses.

“What I think doesn’t matter,” he replies, pausing when Echo flits over to him from where the group’s ghosts had been gathered. She lets out a few urgent chirps and trills before flashing out of sight, and then his focus is on her. “It’s the hardest choice you’ll ever make. Don’t treat it lightly or it’ll consume you.”

Her eyes follow him as he starts to walk away, her frustration near to boiling over again.

“Kel,” she moves after him until he stops, hesitating until she sees his hand twitch with a bare hint of impatience. “Ikora said she knew I was already getting off-world and implied she also knew I wasn’t already on the hunt. Did you know?”

His reply is delayed. “Yes.”

“But Zavala doesn’t?”

“No.”

She doesn’t understand–he _knows_ what she’s struggling with, and she knows him well enough to know that he obviously doesn’t want her to pursue Uldren. “Why haven’t you tried to stop me? Or told Zavala?”

“Like I said. It’s your choice to make.” The simple answer hangs in the air between them, and her brow furrows at the air of rare indecision she can pick up on from him. Eventually, he turns back around and stands in front of her. “Be careful. The Drifter’s not who he wants you to think he is.”

She freezes.

Unperturbed, he steps away and resumes walking away. “Grief muddies waters enough as it is. He’ll make it worse.”

He’s long gone by the time she finds herself able to string words together again, vanished into the City crowds while questions swirl in her head. It’s not altogether shocking that he does know, after all–he’s had an uncanny sense for things that are _off_ ever since he’d returned to the City, and it isn’t like the Drifter’s got himself a perfectly inconspicuous hiding spot.

He could have noticed her coming and going, but she wonders if he’s just got a funny feeling about the guy and is simply worrying about her in his own strange way, or if he knows something she doesn’t.

How does he know the Drifter well enough to be able to make that kind of warning with such clear certainty?

He’s talked about his close brushes with the darkness before, he knows how dangerous it is, just as she does. If he knows about the Drifter, does he know about Gambit? If he knows about Gambit, there’s no way the Vanguard _wouldn’t_ know–it’s a game with too much danger and too much darkness to risk.

“Quinn!” Leilani calls and snaps her out of her thoughtful daze, and she turns around to find her beckoning her over. “We’re all gonna go run through the haunted forest again. You coming?”

Luke, Nyx, and Roland are all walking away behind her, their ghosts breaking off from Ion and Glyph to follow, and Glyph drifts over to join her where she stands. Nikon waits a few paces away, watching.

Quinn winces, knowing that she should keep making the effort to mingle and be happy with her friends, but between how much is on her mind and how burnt out she feels from the last few days of trying, she knows it’ll be a failed venture.

She waves back but shakes her head. “Sorry. I’ve...got something I need to do.”

Glyph’s shell twitches with suspicion. She offers it a thin smile in response.

Leilani’s expression dims slightly but exudes nothing but patient acceptance. “Okay. I’ll see you another time!”

She turns and runs off after the rest of the group, and Quinn’s smile strengthens just the tiniest amount with wonder at how kind of a person she is.

Nikon lingers when Leilani passes by while Ion hovers over his shoulder, bobbing impatiently. His expression warms as he looks at Quinn. “It’s good to see you out and around more. We’ve missed you.”

“I’m trying.” She replies, for lack of anything better, and lifts her shoulders in a shrug.

He nods, and then she’s left behind.

When they’ve disappeared into the crowd, she turns around and lifts her eyes to the Vanguard Tower looming over the City in the near distance.

Worrying her lip in thought, she struggles with indecision. Shaxx rarely spends more than a day or two participating in City events–too busy butting heads with the City factions and their frequently ridiculous demands and requests, or monitoring Crucible matches–so he’s likely busy at work.

If the Vanguard knows, then so does Shaxx. Had he lied to her, or is she right in assuming Kel’s just savvy enough to know the Drifter’s playing games?

Asking would be one way to find out, but he’s as hard to read as Kel is since he, too, has an apparent allergy to being seen in public without his infamous one-horned helmet. But if she were to focus on reading his body language and words…

She rules it out. If he does know what the Drifter is up to and he catches an inkling that she’s competing, he’d be the first to shut it down. He’s always taken the safety of competing guardians seriously, and she’s particularly at risk.

“I thought you had something to do?” Glyph speaks up, drawing her back to Earth and making her frown at the realization of just how much time she’s been spending wrapped up in her own thoughts.

And, well, she _did_ have something to do, but she isn’t yet willing to risk Gambit. She’s having far too much fun with it, danger aside, and that’s a feeling that’s rare for her lately. Plus, she’s still curious about the Drifter.

Suspicious, she quickly corrects herself.

She’s _suspicious_ of the Drifter. She’s especially _suspicious_ after Kel’s warning.

Arms dropping to her sides, Quinn turns away from the new Vanguard hub and heads in a different direction, with the old, under construction Tower now in her sight instead. “Honestly, Glyph, I’m just tired of talking to people.”

And tired of _thinking_. Ever since she’d first made the decision to track down whoever was behind Gambit she’s had a dozen and one things on her mind at any given time–somehow, by seeking a single distraction, she’s gotten herself stuck with _several_.

After a month of nothing but dwelling and feeling empty, it’s overwhelming. If it weren’t for the fact that going back to having nothing to occupy her thoughts would leave her thinking about Cayde again, she’d miss the lack of busy tangles in her head.

She needs a distraction from her distractions. Something to remove all her tumultuous thoughts and suspicions for just a little while without locking her right back into a room with nothing but grief to keep her company.

There’s a solution to that problem, and it starts with ‘l’ and ends with ‘iquor’. Numb is definitely a far cry from empty.

“Tired of talking to people, or tired of people trying to talk sense into you?” Glyph quips as it follows.

The tone of flat reproach slides off her shoulders like water on feathers, her mind set on nothing but the numb, liquid oblivion that’s waiting for her ahead. “Yes.”

Her ghost lets out a soft, huff-like trill but says nothing more, dematting quietly.

She only has to ask Glyph to point her in the right direction twice as she makes her way to the _Tipsy Sparrow_ ; silly as it is, it feels like an accomplishment to not be so out of it as to find herself lost. It’s the small things, she guesses. A month ago, even those two requests for direction would have made her feel uselessly miserable.

It’s late enough by the time she reaches the bar that the majority of festival participants had migrated from the events to the less child-friendly City haunts, and Darin’s joint is particularly bustling. She can see why–the newly renovated building looks better than ever, complete with a brand new neon sign.

“Glyph, did Darin send out a notice that there was some kind of reopening?” She asks, looking warily at the crowd gathered on the patio outside and filtering in and out through the propped open door. Does she have the energy to deal with so many people?

‘ _A little over a week ago_ ,’ Glyph answers. ‘You _were in the middle of a match, and I don’t think you heard me when I told you later on_.’

She winces. “Might as well go say ‘hi’ even if I’m late for it, right?”

It doesn’t reply.

Sighing, she steps forward and carefully winds her way towards the door, ducking past a warlock that nearly runs her over in his haste to exit.

It’s crowded outside, but inside there’s scarcely enough room to breathe. Every booth and table is occupied by laughing, happy patrons, and the rest are all hovering around or dancing to music she can barely hear above the din.

She huffs, struggling to see over heads and shoulders–difficult, considering her short stature–whether there are any open bar stools as she moves further into the bar. A worker frame and one of Leilani’s coworkers bustle around behind the counter in the front, but it’s the large Exo standing behind the rear counter that catches her eye.

Her expression brightens considerably. And there’s an empty seat near him, too. _Score_.

Nudging her way towards it, she slides onto the bar stool only seconds before a middle-aged woman does, earning herself a nasty look that she pointedly ignores.

Darin notices her, his red eyes blinking and jaw light flashing orange when he lifts his chin in greeting. One of his fingers lift in a request to wait, and then he leans towards the woman she had usurped her seat from when she flags him down.

He works quickly with skilled hands in spite of his size, and she finds herself watching his movements. Exos are still fascinating to her, and she’s wondered more than once why whoever had designed them had insisted on giving them the same kind of organic musculature with synthetic materials; frames certainly hadn’t been given the same special treatment.

It still throws her off, despite the fact she’s had years to acclimatize to primarily inorganic beings moving with all the deftness of an organic one. Cayde had certainly demonstrated, more than once, just _how_ deft they could be.

Blinking, she drops her head into her hands. Staring at Darin while thinking about Cayde– _way to be weird_ , _Quinn_.

Fuck, she needs a drink. She misses him so much.

“Been a while,” Darin says somewhere in front of her, synthesized voice deep and black-armored face invisible behind the hands she doesn’t lift her head from–at least until she hears the sound of a glass being set down.

Straight whiskey on the rocks. It had been her drink of choice a few years back before the Red War, right after Gil’s death. Her expression sours. “I look that bad?” She asks, regardless lifting the glass to her lips and drinking.

“No offense,” his tone is flat, “but you’ve got circles darker than my plating under your eyes. You’ve lost weight, too.”

“None taken.” Between short bouts of a few hours here and there, and her half-a-day ‘naps’ after Gambit wore her out, a consistent sleep schedule is something that’s eluded her since the Prison.

She does glance down at the weight comment and frowns; she’d noticed it after her first match, realizing it was the cause of her inexplicable exhaustion. Considering she’d once gone two months–exerting as much energy as she had in that match–without weakening until well into that period of time, it had been alarming to say the least.

Wake up calls come in all forms, she supposes.

He’s looking at her with shrewd eyes, leaning forward on the bar. His jaw light flashes, once, twice in consideration. “Cayde busy? Usually don’t see you down here without ‘im.”

Her heart lurches. She quickly lifts her glass and tips it back for a much larger gulp than the first, wincing at the immediate burn and staring intently at it when she sets it back down. “Real busy. Probably gonna be just me visiting for a while.”

He hums in response, the sound drawing her eyes back up. His jaw shifts like he’s about to say something, but someone else catches his attention and he steps away to take care of his business.

Taking the open opportunity, she knocks back more of the whiskey and considers asking him to just leave the bottle when he comes back.

Glyph flashes into sight next to her, looking between her and the glass, and its facets droop unhappily. “You know, _that’s_ not a good way to cope, either.”

“I know,” she replies, only caring about the drowning buzz that’s creeping up. The Festival clearly isn’t working–what else does it want from her when the only method of coping she has that _works_ is the rush of a competition it doesn’t like?

“At least _slow down_?” It whines as she lifts the glass again.

Her motion halts at its request and she stares at it, pursing her lips and closing her eyes. With a heavy sigh, she sets the glass back down and nods. While the idea of getting blackout drunk as fast as possible sounds great, the aftermath doesn’t.

And she’s been worrying her ghost enough lately as it is.

“Fastest I’ve seen you drink.” Darin stops in front of her again after a brief lull, and she looks up at him sheepishly. “Usually ‘bout an hour in here before you’ve drank that much.”

“And Cayde would end up tripping over himself another hour after that.” She replies, trying to sound amused at the memory of how little alcohol tolerance Cayde had and only managing a soft murmur. It’s tempting to take another gulp of her drink, but, aware of Glyph’s eye on her, she forces herself to sip instead.

His eyes flick down to her glass and then back up, and his jaw light pulses. “Y’know how useless it is lyin’ to a bartender?” He mutters.

She balks. “I wasn’t lying.”

“Mhm.” He sounds utterly unconvinced, and Quinn knows it’s useless to hope that the whipcrack-sharp titan hadn’t put the miniscule pieces together and knows exactly what she’s keeping from him. “Guessin’ it’s Vanguard business, whatever it is. You plan on keepin’ it Vanguard business, take it easy on the alcohol. You’re an open book _sober_ , kid.”

A huff leaves her. “You’re probably the only bartender that’s ever advised someone _not_ to drink.”

He chuckles, but thankfully drops the subject, and the two of them dive into ordinary conversation; the state of the City after the War, the myriad factions and their shifting efforts at recruiting, and the bar’s renewal. Everything except Cayde.

He definitely knows. She tries not to mentally kick herself for it.

Whether it’s the result of the alcohol or the way she’s burnt off her restlessness and tangled frustration with Gambit, or even the fact she’s talking to someone _not_ associated closely with her fireteam, it’s the easiest that conversation has come to her in months.

Glyph is sufficiently pacified by her slowed drinking pace and joins in the chatting, clearly happy with her going back on _being tired of talking to people_ even if it’s not happy with where said talking is taking place.

Darin’s attention wanes as the next hour ticks by when one of his employees clocks out for the night and leaves him to pick up the remainder of the business. He replaces her glass with something much lighter once she finishes–ignoring Glyph’s huffed protest with a firm “ _she needs it, little light, let it be_ ”–and then she’s left to her own devices as the crowd slowly dwindles.

Glyph drifts around the bar without her when it’s clear that she’s got little intention to leave, move, or otherwise be entertaining, and she spends time she doesn’t bother keeping track of to just sit and let the alcohol works its way through her system.

Numb is good. Numb means even accidentally thinking of her loss won’t hurt.

If she thinks it hard enough, maybe it’ll actually work.

“Hey!” Glyph calls out to her, and she blinks at it, lifting an eyebrow at the energetic spinning of its shell. “Listen! I just got a message. Zavala wants to talk to you.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Oh, come on! Maybe he’s lifting your lockdown and letting you back into the field.” Glyph says, making sure to doggedly remain in her line of sight when she looks away.

She doubts the hell out of that. More likely he had caught onto her excursions and has plans to reprimand her, remind her that her first responsibility as a guardian is to the City and the remnants of civilization, _not_ herself and her selfish wants.

She starts to think that she doesn’t particularly care about the City these days, but guilt and discomfort sucker punches her and she shakes it away.

As she’s about to respond to Glyph, a shout cuts over the low din of the bar.

“You’re a dirty fucking _cheat_!”

Quinn blinks in bewilderment that’s reflected by her ghost–and then a familiar voice follows the first.

“C’mon, brother, no reason to go blaming your own bad luck on someone else cheatin’.”

She spins around quickly enough that her alcohol intake catches up with her. Wincing, she scrunches her eyes shut until the dizzying static disappears from inside her head, then looks up and focuses on the back corner of the bar.

Sure enough, sitting there in the farthest corner booth is the Drifter. A man stands across the table from him while he grins, completely unbothered by the tense set of the man’s shoulders. A spread of indistinct cards is scattered on the table between them.

The Drifter’s expression, at first glance, seems aloof, but she recognizes the dangerous glint in his eyes; the same kind of honed edge she’d seen when the titan from her first match had challenged him. She wonders if he realizes that he wields a grin the same way a vicious dog wields a snarl.

It’s hard to imagine he doesn’t.

He lounges comfortably, one arm thrown casually over the back of the booth seat. One of his hands extends, palm open flat and fingers bending twice. “Pay up.” He says, slowly.

The two stare each other down as she watches. She counts out three heartbeats before the Drifter’s opponent lets out a noise of frustration and a trio of fist-sized glimmer cubes materialize onto the table.

Her eyes widen. No wonder the guy is pissed–that is a _lot_ of glimmer.

She stands as the man slides out of the booth and storms away from the Drifter, who’s looking entirely too pleased with himself. He hefts one of the cubes in consideration, and then all three cubes flicker back out of existence.

Still no sign of his ever-shy ghost.

She doesn’t even realize she’s started moving through the crowd until Glyph darts out in front of her, and she makes a face at the abrupt and awkward stop she’s forced to make. “Quinn, just ignore him.” It begs.

Heedless, she very intentionally ducks _under_ her ghost and continues forward, sliding into the space the man had vacated before Glyph can protest further.

He’s gathering up his cards when she sits down, and he looks up at the sound of her glass clinking down on the table. A wide grin–this time of the genuinely friendly variety–spreads across his face. She catches herself mirroring the expression.

“Fancy seein’ you here.” He drawls.

“Should be me saying that,” she replies with a lifted brow, “the bartender is a friend of mine, I’m here a lot. I figured your only haunt was that dirty alley you decided to set up shop in for some reason.”

“I got a life, too. You think I wanna be like that one-horned idiot up in the Tower, at the beck n’ call of bureaucrats and zealots, standin’ around like some kinda decorative fixture? Nah, ain’t my style.” He waves dismissively, shuffling the deck of cards in his hands.

“No,” Glyph mutters over her shoulder, “instead you skulk around like a cockroach and pretend to be everyone’s friend.”

Drifter laughs aloud at the accusation. “You got one helluva mouth for somethin’ that ain’t got one, ghost.”

“And you’ve got a lot of nerve setting up somewhere you’re not wanted!” It fires back.

“ _Glyph_.” She stares at it with wide eyes. 

She hasn’t heard it so incensed since her fireteam had been called out to Mercury to help Sagira clean up the mess her guardian had created in the Infinite Forest–she distinctly recalls the two getting into a heated verbal spar about keeping her guardian from screwing around with something as dangerous as Vex simulations.

Which is, more or less, exactly what it’s been trying to do, wanting her to avoid the Drifter and give up Gambit. She already willingly acknowledged that associating with both is probably dangerous _before_ Kel had implied as much earlier.

And yet, here she is.

Her eyes shift to the Drifter, but he just looks amused at its anger. “You set the rules in the Tower now, little buddy? I must’ve missed the memo.”

Glyph starts to argue, facets flitting around in agitation. It seems to reconsider, and simply says: “I’m not your _buddy_.”

“‘Course not.” Drifter snorts, tapping his deck on the table twice and then pointing at her with it. “How ‘bout you? You bothered by ol’ Drifter’s presence?”

She glances at Glyph again. It’s looking back at her hopefully, and she averts her gaze. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“See, I _like_ that. Too many of you City types are too quick to jump to conclusions.”

“Are you telling me I should trust you?” She asks, genuinely curious.

“Hell, _I_ wouldn’t trust me. That’s the nature of trust though, isn’t it? I’ve met plenty of people could make you believe they’re the most trustworthy person in the space between here ‘n heliopause–still shoot you in the back first chance they get for a few scraps.” He sets the deck down and leans back, his arms crossing.

His lips curl, then, and he looks at Glyph. “Met a few of you ghosts like that, too.”

Glyph recoils in offense, shell popping out in anger. “None of us are like that!”

“You met every one of your kind in existence?”

“I–” it bobs once, suddenly uncertain thanks to _his_ certainty. “No. But the Traveler made us to help humanity. It’s not _in_ us to be selfish.”

“Your big, dead god tell you that?” He asks, waiting with lifted eyebrows and a knowing look for it to answer.

When it fails to, he leans forward and cocks his head to the side, smile challenging. “Listen, I’m not gonna argue dogma with you, ghost–all I’m sayin’ is that big ball in the sky ain’t lookin’ out for any of us. Dark Age proved that thousands of years ago.”

Glyph stares back at him, drooping slightly but clearly struggling to hold onto frustration and distaste for the man. After a lengthy pause, it finally backs down and silently demats into her light. ‘ _Can we go_?’ It asks her.

Quinn sips at her drink and says nothing; she’s more curious than ever, now, and she knows it’s unhappily aware.

Had the Drifter been alive during the Dark Age? His conviction with that last statement suggests as much, and from what she knows of that period of time, it would certainly explain his disregard for the loss of guardian life.

“Why are you here if it’s not to help protect the City?” She reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear and leans forward as well, watching him carefully.

“I got my reasons,” he answers flatly, something flashing across his expression fast enough that she fails to catch it. “Can’t just say some things, darlin’.”

‘ _Because_ that _screams trustworthy._ ’ Glyph grouses in the back of her head.

Her gaze goes distant with frustration at its sullen attitude. This is probably– _definitely_ –the longest conversation she’s had with the Drifter, and it’s certainly making its displeasure with the fact apparent.

Drifter laughs at her expression. “Your little friend doesn’t like me too much, does it?”

“I’d say I’m sorry on its behalf, but I’m still not sure it’s entirely unjustified.”

“Ah, it ain’t the first and it won’t be the last.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” She frowns.

His answering smile is toothy. “I’ve been on the bad side of scarier things than it and most everything this system’s got to offer, so no. You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

Her skin prickles with gooseflesh at the implication, and she stares at him–but the cold fist of panic closing around her heart and lungs from the reminder doesn’t come, and the flashes of nightmarish images behind her eyes are indistinct and easy to brush aside.

It’s getting better.

From their first interaction up until this one, it gets easier to believe that he’s been alive for over a thousand years, maybe more. He has a scary grasp of reading people that puts her own talent for it to shame.

It’s the kind of skill that comes from years and years and many more years of practice.

Kel is nearly two thousand years old by his own admission, and he’s just as good at it.

Her eyes settle on the deck of cards sitting between them. She’ll treat his question like a rhetorical one even if it isn’t meant to be. “What game were you playing with that other guardian?”

The easygoing demeanor he melts into drags a small smile out of her again. Watching as he splits the deck and deals out two hands while explaining the rules, she ignores Glyph’s grumpy comment about his friendly attitude being snakelike.

Between Kel’s warning and her own uncertainty she isn’t blindly trusting the man, but Cayde was the last person that could so easily make her smile when she’s down–and she’s _tired_ of wallowing. She had come here to drown out her problems, but she likes to think she’s smart enough to find an alternative to something so self-destructive when it presents itself to her.

Once she finds a substitute for Gambit, it’ll go the same road. She can let the Drifter believe she trusts him as long as he keeps her distracted until she manages to sort her shit out.

The cards he deals to her are different from anything she’s ever seen; taller than a regular deck and decorated with circular and semicircular symbols (which she frowns at, because somehow they seem familiar and she can’t place why) in a number of different patterns and colors.

Maybe it’s a game older guardians used to play. It’s a far cry from poker, only alike in the sense that she struggles to grasp how to play and is _miserably_ awful at it. 

The Drifter shares none of her difficulties, playing like an expert or what she imagines an expert would be given her lack of familiarity.

She made the observation upon meeting him that he likely wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep playing her under the table, and that thought had only been strengthened during his explanation of Gambit– _you want someone to hold your hand? ‘Cause I ain’t gonna_ –but she’s surprised to find that he’s patient with her questions and mistakes.

What’s the difference between Gambit and this? He doesn’t strike her as the type to change his stance on learning something new, so there has to be _some_ kind of significance.

Figuring it out isn’t helped by how mildly tipsy she is, but then it’s not so much the game itself that she cares about. It’s great for a diversion, sure–but so is _he_ , cracking jokes that make her laugh louder than she has in months and occasionally dropping comments or stories that pique her interest in him even higher.

She’d say he’s tight-lipped, but the truth is that he speaks freely about a few things, and with everything else just manages to wind the conversation back around to her and subjects other than himself. Again, _not_ helped by the alcohol, but, still.

Every time she tries to tip the wordplay back in her favor, he smiles knowingly at her, drops a card onto the table to win the hand, and diverts around it.

It distracts her every single time.

She doesn’t realize the bar has almost completely emptied as their game continues. When Darin passes by the table and mentions that he’ll be closing up soon, she blinks and looks around, wondering how time had passed so quickly.

It’s a thought apparently shared by the Drifter. He smiles at her as he gathers up his cards. “Time spent with friends sure flies by, don’t it, sister?”

“Is that what we are?” She scoffs, crossing her arms on the table and dropping her chin down onto them. Her eyes follow the motions of his hands as he shuffles the deck, and when the deck is dematted by his ghost, she pouts. “I’m not sure someone would rob their ‘friend’ blind at cards.”

“Way I heard it,” he replies smoothly, leaning back, “Cayde won your games at every turn. Wasn’t he more than just a ‘friend’?”

She recoils sharply. Most of her and Cayde’s card games had taken place in private after he’d either shirked his duties or finished with them–and they’d also bet on things _other_ than money, but that’s besides the point.

There’s only one conclusion she can come to. “How did you know Cayde?”

He waves a hand vaguely at her wary tone, still smiling, though it looks just the slightest bit dimmer. “Long story. Your man knew a lotta people. Some would surprise you.”

A stone settles in her throat. Not _her_ man anymore. Uldren and the Barons had seen to that.

She fixes her eyes on the surface of the table, nail chipping idly at a crack in the polish. Unsure of why she’s suddenly unwilling to meet his eyes and unable to decide whether she’s more upset or angry at the current subject, it takes her a moment to find her words. “Yeah. He was good at making friends in strange places.”

“I’d say it’s what did him in.”

Her decision on how to feel shifts like a switch had been flipped, a flicker of rage passing over her expression as she fixes the Drifter with a dark look.

His hands lift in a placating gesture, the smile dropping from his face. “Sore spot. Didn’t realize. He was a good guy and I ain’t happy he’s gone, either.”

“You sure don’t sound like it.” She snaps.

“You live as long as I have,” he says after a beat, any previous trace of humor in his voice gone entirely, “you end up with a _long_ list of names you aren’t ever gonna see again.”

Like _that’s_ supposed to make her feel any better.

Expression twisting somewhere between pain and anger, she runs a hand through her hair, trying not to let herself picture a list of her own. Earlier she had wondered whether leaving that list behind for justice would be worth it–now she’s wondering if it would be better than waiting long enough to see them get crossed off instead.

Picked off, one by one, by the enemies of humanity.

Just like Gil.

Just like Cayde.

“Listen, darlin’,” Drifter says, and she looks up when he shifts in her periphery. He’s leaning towards her again, one arm on the table in front of him. “Don’t let his death weigh on you. Somewhere out there, someone’s got a bullet with your name on it.”

She stiffens, an icy chill settling over her skin and disconcerting deja vu swirling in her veins. The dream she’d woken up from the other day rockets back into the forefront of her mind in stark clarity, reminding her of why she had wanted to speak to him in the first place.

The Drifter in her dream had said those _exact_ words to her.

What the _fuck_.

He continues, either unaware of her confused unease or assuming it has to do with the conversation. “Same for him. Same for me. Not a thing we can do about it. He knew the best way to deal with it was to go out on your terms with a gun in your hand, somethin’ I’m sure he kept to right up ‘till the end.”

She stares at him, swallowing thickly and struggling to put a finger on what she’s feeling. Struggling to figure out how to respond. Part of her wants to be pissed that he’s daring to assume what Cayde may have been thinking in his last moments, but she _knew_ Cayde, and his words ring true enough to keep her quiet.

 _You tell Ikora and Zavala...tell ‘em the Dare was the best bet I ever lost. And sunshine? This–it wasn’t_... _it wasn’t your fault_.

Cayde’s voice had distorted and cracked to the point of incomprehensibility after that, but machine or not, she’d been able to see the _I love you_ in his eyes. Then they’d gone dark, and he’d gone still, and it felt like she’d been the one shot instead.

His last words, what she’d seen from Sundance’s last operational recording–the Drifter is right. She’s not sure how to feel about that.

 _It wasn’t your fault_.

Tears well up in her eyes and she blinks them away by sheer force of will alone. “You sound like you knew him well.”

“We ran together for a while. I respected him. Better man than this world or these people deserved,” he admits, and she wonders at it. He doesn’t seem to hold many people in such high regard, and it’s a bittersweet thought that Cayde had been one of the few to earn it.

 _The Drifter’s not who he wants you to think he is_.

How much of this whole conversation is just an act? Is _any_ of it an act?

Everything she wants to say refuses to come to mind, and she sits there in silence, wondering how a decent end to the night had twisted so quickly.

He slides out of the booth and steps closer until he’s standing next to her. He’s as quiet as she is, seemingly looking for the right words, too. “The Derelict’s always open to you if you need to vent.”

He’s walking away before she can say anything to that, but something occurs to her and she calls out, “Hey! How much do I owe you for those games?”

The question stops him, and when he turns back his usual overly-charming grin is back in place. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. Just keep showin’ up for matches and I’ll consider us solid.”

She blinks at the easy answer and watches him leave.

It’s only her and another patron slouched over the bar, now, and Darin is trying to rouse the latter to get him out. Huffing out a laugh, she thinks: _give it another sixty seconds and he’s just gonna haul the poor bastard out like a sack of potatoes_.

She looks back at the table and rolls the conversation she’d just had in her head. Had the Drifter meant that she’s welcome to participate in Gambit at any time, or that he’s fully willing to lend her an ear when she needs one?

Save for her fireteam, Petra, and the Vanguard as well as its inner circle, he _is_ the only one aware of Cayde’s death. One of the few people she can freely talk about it with.

He has such a vastly different perspective on it than anyone else.

Her fireteam? They can’t do anything without Vanguard approval, so they may as well move on. Kel? He’s dead and nothing will bring him back, so seeking justice is worthless. The Vanguard? Justice isn’t worth risking another war, even though any retaliation by the Reefborn after Oryx shredded their fleet and killed their Queen would be laughable.

The Drifter? Yeah, he’s gone, but he knew it was coming and he went out on his own terms. No trying to convince her to let it go, just a push for her to find _some_ comfort in knowing that an end is coming for everyone in one form or another.

Fatalistic or not, it’s his perspective that, somehow, _does_ give her some measure of comfort.

It doesn’t make it hurt less, it doesn’t make her want to give up on seeking justice for him, and she’s not sure if she can ever admit it to Glyph, but it’s _something_.


	8. temptation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **n.** _the desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise; a thing or course of action that attracts or tempts someone._

The first snowfall of the year comes on the last day of the Festival of the Lost.

It’s light, definitely won’t stick around for long until winter fully sets in, and a far cry from what coverage the mountainous climate will bring in the coming weeks, but it’s enough to blanket Tower residents with even more cheer.

Snowfall means holidays. Holidays mean presents, treats, snowball fights, and celebrations. Ringing in the new year and saying goodbye to the old—and for guardians, the Dawning brought with it a vigil for lost allies and loved ones.

It’s bound to be the first truly somber Dawning in City history. In the midst of recovering from the War, no one had the time to celebrate it the year before, and the Red Legion had killed so many helpless guardians that it’s still hard for Quinn to fathom.

According to Ikora, for the first time since the crisis on the Moon, there are scant few guardians within the City—veterans and kinderguardians alike—that can’t claim to have lost a friend or ally.

She had dodged the first bullet with all of her closest friends and allies making it out of the City alive. Then the second had struck true, and now she has a reason to light one of the vigil’s memorial lanterns.

She hates that fact far more than she has any right to. By all accounts, she got off _easy_. She’s only been active in the world for a little over a decade, now, and hasn’t had nearly the same amount of time as other guardians to gather a wider net of friends and allies—and more people to lose.

But she can’t help it, and as she stares bitterly up at the light snowfall from where she stands under the roof by Banshee’s shop in the main plaza, she finds herself dreading the holiday, anyway.

She wishes she wasn’t left at the whims of her Gambit team in order to participate; it’d be the perfect time to throw herself into the competition to escape the bright decorations and cheer. By doing so, she could avoid being _that_ person.

 _I’m miserable, why should any of you be happy_?

Even bitter and depressed, she isn’t going to let herself drag the atmosphere down. She’ll hide in her room if she has to, because if her team wants to so easily move on then she isn’t going to stop them.

Whether or not she’ll be _happy_ about them choosing to move on is still a completely different subject.

“Not used to you bein’ so quiet.”

Quinn turns at the sound of Banshee-44’s familiar gruff voice, wordlessly relieved by the distraction. He’s got an auto rifle sitting on the counter of his open stall, tucked comfortably under an upper level of the plaza, and has his hands buried in a disorganized bin of tools nearby.

He’s digging around for something, orange jaw light pulsing erratically in aggravation.

Her hands settle on her hips as he gives up on the bin, grumbles irritably, and then ducks down behind the counter—the sound of more chaotic digging follows. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Seems like it’s been the usual for you, recently.” He replies, a loud clatter of gun parts of tools reaching her ears and resulting in a lifted eyebrow. “—where the hell’d I put that AR tool?”

Familiar with the exo’s habits by this point, her eyes flick up to one of the tool racks hung up on the inside of his shop. She approaches the counter and leans over it, reaching through the open window to lift the tool he’s looking for from the peg it rests on. “Here, Banshee.”

A hollow _thunk_ under the shop’s counter answers her and he lets out a swear, standing and blinking at the tool she holds out to him. He rubs the solid plating on top of his head, baffled and grouchy. “You find it in that bin?” He asks, taking it from her with muttered thanks.

“It was on your tool rack.”

His jaw light pulses. “Could’a swore I put it in the bin.”

She watches him return to work with a twitch of her lips. His memory problems are as endearing as they are heartbreaking, keeping him isolated from others physically, if not socially. He’s admitted to her that he hates talking to people because of how frustrating it is losing track of everything—like forgetting what he’s discussing with someone mid-conversation.

A lot of exos avoid him outright or limit their time around him. It’s different for every exo, but none of them like the reminder of what future resets could take from them. For Banshee it’s his memory, for Gil it had been his empathy.

Cayde suffered from it, too. Even with just six resets, he’d told her that there were such massive chunks of memories from “Caydes one-through-five” missing to the point he considered them different people entirely.

The higher the number, the more the problems compounded.

Suddenly unsettled by the sting of relief that she isn’t going to see Cayde’s mind deteriorate to this point and guilty on Banshee’s behalf to boot, Quinn quickly piggybacks away from the subject. “Hey, Banshee?” She asks.

A grunt of acknowledgement is the response she receives, letting her know he’s listening but staying focused on his work.

She hesitates, trying to figure out how to put the question she has into words. “If you lost someone close to you and you wanted to get justice for them, but you couldn’t, what would you do?”

His hands pause over the rifle; she winces when she realizes the ‘if’ in her question is unnecessary. He’s an old exo. He most certainly _has_ lost people close to him. After a beat, he looks up at her and stares with his jaw shifting. “What’d be stopping me?”

Duty? Consideration for the wellbeing of others? Uncertainty?

She says nothing.

He watches her for a moment longer—then his jaw light flashes twice rapidly and he returns to working, pausing long enough to swat at the lamp illuminating his work when it flickers. “S’pose I’d just keep goin’. S’all I can do.”

“What if you can’t figure out how?”

Banshee lets out a huff, reaching for a screwdriver and expertly popping the modded casing off the gun. “End of a barrel isn’t the way, if that’s what you’re askin’. Been makin’ guns for hundreds of years and seen it over and over again.” A pause, and when he continues his voice is less gruff, more solemn. “Bullets don’t bring the dead back, just put more in the ground.”

Deep down, she knows this already, but the answer gives her no comfort and makes her no less unhappy.

She swallows thickly and looks away, back out to the plaza where a thin layer of snow already blankets most surfaces. Glyph flits about happily above the heads of other guardians coming and going, facets spinning around as it enjoys the weather.

A wry smile finds its way onto her lips. Two months, still no answers. Three people now have told her in more or less words that going after Uldren won’t bring Cayde back, and now Banshee adds onto that by implying _it won’t make her feel better_.

Won’t it?

She can’t bring herself to just let it go. She’s not sure what she’d do with herself if she _did_.

And what if Uldren doesn’t plan on _stopping_ at killing Cayde? What if his whole reason for joining forces with the Barons is something worse than escaping the Prison and letting hell loose on the Awoken’s turf? What would Zavala’s paranoid caution get them _then_?

Glyph notices her watching and bobs in the air, flying over and jittering with a vibrant cheer that she tries to draw on. It feels more like a band-aid over a broken arm. At least she tried.

She turns back to the exo still hard at work. “Thanks.”

“For what?” Banshee blinks up at her, navy blue face plates pinching in open bafflement.

It takes her a moment to realize he’s already completely forgotten the conversation, lost in his focus on the weapon he’s in the middle of fixing. She offers him a small, sad smile. “Nevermind. It’s nothing.”

Glyph glances between them as she passes it by, heading for the catwalk separating the plaza from the bazaar and resident block. “What was all that about?” It asks once it catches up.

“We were talking about something.”

It lets out a noise of sad frustration. “You know, I wish we could dig up _some_ data on the exos from old Clovis Bray facilities so we can find a way to reverse reset damage. I can’t imagine what it’s like for him to deal with that.”

She hums in agreement.

The enclosed courtyard marking the change from Vanguard operation to residential operation is warmer than the exterior, and she pauses at the top of the stairs to absorb some of the warmth before she moves on.

Chimes hung from the rafters and the branches of the tree in the planter below clink gently in the soft breezes coming in from the plaza, and light chatter from civilians in the rest areas down below the stairs drifts up towards her. 

Her stomach growls insistently when the scent of warm food from the bazaar farther down reaches her, and with a sigh, she continues downstairs and into the connecting hall.

As she rounds the corner at the end of the decorated brick hallway to enter the bazaar, she bumps into someone and stumbles back, blinking. In front of her is someone wearing a familiar blue, hooded poncho and distinctive falconry gloves. “Hawthorne!”

“Hey! Just the person I was looking for.” Suraya Hawthorne smiles at her warmly, her darker skin flushed from the cold.

“You were looking for me?” She frowns, trying to think of the last time the older woman had sought her out and failing to come up with anytime _after_ the City had been reclaimed. “What for?”

“I was asked to pass on a message—don’t usually like to play middleman, but I have an ulterior motive,” she replies, her smile widening into something impish.

Quinn lifts an eyebrow but gestures for Hawthorne to walk with her; the smell of food is stronger here in the hall, and she’s _really_ hungry. “On a scale of one to ‘Big Blue disapproves’, how worried should I be?”

“A solid three. Five, depending on how you feel about shooting contests.” Hawthorne wiggles a hand in the air, falling into step next to her and following when she turns for one of the restaurants tucked under the courtyard in the level above.

“ _Shooting contests_?”

“Focus, hero. First things first.” She taps Quinn on the shoulder and draws them both to a stop, turning to face her and crossing her arms. “Zavala asked me to tell you that he wants to talk to you.”

“Told you it was important.” Glyph mutters over her shoulder.

She waves a hand at it lightly and feels her lip twitch with displeasure. “Yeah, I got his message already. I’m opting to ignore it.”

Hawthorne’s warm expression fades into disapproval—the kind that has Quinn feeling like she’s about to be chastised by her _mother_.

Her dark eyes shift around to check if anyone is within earshot before she continues. “Listen, I know you’re still pissed about how Zavala handled what happened at the Reef. I get it. He’s looking out for his people, and I don’t blame him for advocating caution over running off half-cocked and getting people killed.”

Quinn’s expression twists further. “So you don’t think he deserves justice, either?”

“Didn’t say that. Just said I understand Zavala’s point of view. Besides, when did someone telling you to think about the little people ever stop you or your team?” Hawthorne lifts her eyebrows pointedly.

The message is received loud and clear, and she winces; after the flight from the City, she and Roland had helped Hawthorne set up relays to lead survivors to the Farm for refuge. Then, they immediately ignored her request to remain on Earth to protect those refugees and had booked it to Titan after receiving Zavala’s request for aid.

It’s an uncomfortable parallel. “It turned out well in the end.”

“Sure did.” Hawthorne agrees. “Still took a biiiiig risk.”

She doesn’t like that the first thought that comes to mind is in the Drifter’s voice. _Sometimes takin’ a gamble is the only way to get things done_.

Looking away, she lifts a hand to brush away the accumulating snowflakes on her shoulders and in her hair. “Did Zavala say what he wanted?”

“Nope. He just said it was fairly important, but that you could take your time. He knows you’re struggling right now.” Hawthorne’s hands settle on her hips, still looking at her like she’s being a particularly unruly child that _really_ should know better.

Doing nothing but proving Hawthorne’s point, Quinn huffs, shifting and tapping the toe of her boot impatiently on the ground. If Zavala thinks he can make things right by passing on the bullshit lie that he _understands and cares_ that he’s hurting her, then he’s sorely mistaken.

A falcon’s screech cuts through the quiet din of the crowd around the bazaar, and from around the protruding edge of the upper level, rapid fire wing flaps announce the arrival of Hawthorne’s faithful feathered friend.

Louis lands on his owner’s head unsteadily, wings flapping lightly to balance himself. Her expression pinches and she shifts forward with the weight of the bird’s landing, and then blinks as though absolutely nothing had happened.

Glyph blips flatly next to Quinn. “Hawthorne? You’ve got a bird on your head.”

“Yep,” she replies, completely deadpan. “He’s mad I’ve been running so many errands and attending more meetings than paying attention to him lately.”

The response surprises her; _meetings_ meant _the Consensus_ , because the Vanguard’s open-door policy rendered them all but wasteful except in dire circumstances. Hawthorne had been given a bigger place in Vanguard business after she’d helped take the City back, acting as the voice of the people living down below under the Vanguard’s protection.

Usually she spends more time helping the Vanguard coordinate assignments of lesser importance in the ranks rather than attending Consensus meetings.

Quinn frowns. “Is something going on?”

“Beyond the usual faction bickering?” She shrugs, lifting a dirty look at the bird on her head when he chirps in offense. “Things are changing fast in the City. You guys lost a major political figure when Ghaul killed the Speaker during the War, far as I’ve been led to believe, and you-know-who hasn’t been at the last dozen meetings. People are starting to notice.”

They both fall into a heavy silence. Hawthorne looks unhappy, and Quinn isn’t sure what to bet on as to the cause—the woman’s been pretty vocal about her dislike of ‘The Big Guys’, and the vast majority of Consensus members fit the bill.

But if people are starting to notice Cayde’s absence, Hawthorne is savvy enough to recognize the kind of vacuum he leaves behind. Zavala’s lie about him being out scouting is only going to hold up to scrutiny for so much longer until it becomes obvious.

Hunters as a whole tend to shy away from the City for long stretches of time, preferring to remain active and mobile in the field, but Cayde was more than just a _hunter_. He was a key player in the City’s political sphere—a fact which he voiced his hatred of far more than once—and one of the balancing figures of power that kept the factions from devolving into open political warfare to wrest control of the City and its operations.

Even _with_ the Speaker and the Vanguard acting as a counterbalance, the factions vying for power is felt every _day_. With Zavala forced to step in until another Speaker can be decided on, and with Cayde gone, the Vanguard has less weight.

If the factions are starting to smell blood in the water, things could get nasty _quickly_. The last thing the City needs after the devastation of the Red War is another _faction_ war.

Her chest aches. She can’t help but feel like Cayde had been the uniting factor keeping everything together—if not just for her, than for the Vanguard and the City alike.

Hawthorne’s head shakes and she lets out a sigh. “Lemme tell you, I’m _still_ tempted to punch Hideo in the face every time he opens his mouth.” A pause. “Again.”

“Didn’t he get you thrown out of the City for doing that the first time?”

“What can I say? Guy’s a jerk.”

She snorts at the flat statement, heavy heart alleviating somewhat; she has absolutely no arguments to that one. If _anyone_ deserves a punch in the face, it’s Executor Hideo.

The warm smile returns to Hawthorne’s face at the levity, but it’s tinged with more weariness than before. Lifting a gloved hand, she coaxes Louis off of her head. “Listen, I gotta get back to work. Always something needing done for you guardians.”

“Sure. Thanks for the update.” Quinn steps aside to let her pass.

“Oh,” Hawthorne says abruptly, stopping and turning back with a bright smile, “my ulterior motive! If you see your pal Kel, let him know he still owes me drinks for losing our last shooting contest.”

For a moment, Quinn completely forgets about the enticing smell of the nearby food as she stares at Hawthorne’s retreating form, the gears in her head grinding and stuttering as they struggle to process what they’d just heard.

Next to her, Glyph is equally as baffled. “But Kel doesn’t _lose_ shooting contests.”

Well, there’s a first for everything?

Shaking her head, she returns to her previous goal—food. Upon poking her head in the door of the restaurant she finds it fully packed with people escaping the cold during the lunch rush, and she decides against it. It’s colder outside, but between the heat lamps and naturally running a little warmer thanks to her light, she’s willing to deal with the cold more than she is other people.

The stall she settles on is tucked near a stairwell heading down into the Tower annex; it’s a quieter area of the bazaar, and there’s only one other sitting at the counter, a dark shawl over their head and covering the long, dark jacket they wear.

She pays them no mind, sliding onto a stool at the opposite end and putting in an order once the chef notices her.

“I really think you should—” Glyph starts to say after a few minutes of silence pass.

“Zavala can damn well wait,” she grouses before it can finish, leaning on the counter and resting her chin in an upturned palm. “He deserves it, I don’t care what Hawthorne says.”

Its shell spins irritably, drifting to the side when her order is set in front of her. “That is _so_ childish, you know that?”

“He did say I can take my time,” she points out.

“Well, _yes_ , but what if I’m right? What if he’s planning on putting you back in the field?” it demands.

She ignores it, caring much less about Zavala and much more about her food—primarily because she’s hungry, but also because it’s a good sign her appetite has returned. She still doesn’t have the will to waste energy making food _herself_ , but it’s a step in the right direction, she thinks.

Glyph waits, twitching impatiently, until she finally slows down enough to respond. “You’re pretty damn determined for me to forget about the Drifter and move on to some other thing to focus on, aren’t you?”

“What do you think?” it asks her dryly. “He’s scum.”

“Now, _that’s_ not very nice.” A familiar voice drawls from beside her, causing her to stiffen up in her seat.

Sure enough, when she turns she finds the Drifter settled onto the stool next to her, lounging lazily against the counter with his elbow propped up and his hands clasped together in front of him. He’s staring at Glyph with a wry smile, face shadowed by the hooded shawl he wears over his jacket.

She blinks, leaning back and noticing that the other person she had ignored before was now the very same one sitting beside her.

Glyph beeps angrily at him. “Maybe you should stop being so shady. Until then, my point stands.”

Drifter barks out a laugh. “Feisty! You kiss your guardian with that mouth?”

Its shell pulls down over its eye in irritation, but it seems to struggle finding some kind of retort. Finally giving up, it lets out a series of frustrated noises and then darts away from the restaurant, settling about thirty feet away near a covered pavilion and watching the two of them angrily.

“Is there a reason you’re intent on upsetting my ghost?” she asks.

“It ain’t my fault the little guy’s so easy to get a rise out of.”

The skeptical look she turns on him makes his grin widen, and she turns back to her food with a pinched expression. Does he have _any_ shame in being such a specifically friendly brand of antagonistic? “You look ridiculous. Who wears a shawl over a jacket?”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “I think it brings out my eyes.”

She coughs in surprise; she has to have imagined the way that almost sounded like a teasing _flirt_. It’s just his usual game of throwing people off balance, nothing more—and damn if it isn’t effective. She never knows what to expect when she’s interacting with him. It makes him nearly impossible to pin down, and that’s probably exactly how he likes it.

“I didn’t picture you as such a fashionista.” She wiggles her fingers at him, fixing her expression into something pointedly unimpressed.

“Isn’t that all you guardians worry about? Figured I’d try to blend in.” He says, again making her frown at his use of _you_ rather than _we_. “Couldn’t begin to tell you how many of you people I’ve heard worryin’ about the paint jobs on your armor. Used to be you’d throw on any sturdy piece of plasteel n’ call it a day.”

Rolling her eyes and pushing her empty dish away, she starts to ask Glyph to transfer glimmer for the meal before remembering her ghost is sulking across the way.

Next to her, a coin-sized cube of glimmer shimmers into existence on the counter. Enough for what she’d ordered.

She stares at it, then looks at the Drifter, who’s smiling like he’s waiting for her to ask. It’s pretty obvious that he’s the only one around to drop glimmer on her meal like some kind of good samaritan, though, so she refuses to take the bait.

Instead, her eyebrow lifts. He always puts on such an intentionally scummy, conman-like attitude, and yet here he is paying for her food without being asked. “You know, if you were planning on wining and dining me, you might’ve picked a fancier place and shown up _before_ I already ate.”

Another laugh and a witty retort is what she expects, so he catches her off guard _again_ when his response is a simple, knowing smile and a gleam in his eyes she can’t interpret. “I’m sure I can find somewhere in the City that fits the bill if that’s what you want, darlin’.”

She sucks in a startled breath.

Okay, _that’s_ undeniably a flirt.

“You’d have to ditch the shawl. Doesn’t suit you.” Her mouth moves before her brain can catch up to it. At the very least, any flush that rises to her cheeks at the slip can easily be blamed on the cold weather. She definitely has no plans to take the Drifter up on that offer. Not. At. All.

“Here I thought you dig the hooded look,” he replies smoothly, the raspy purr of it absolutely, one-hundred-percent _completely_ intentional—and having the exact effect on her he intends.

Voices. It’s _always_ voices, with her.

What is _happening_ right now?

The shop’s chef wanders by and grabs the empty dish and glimmer from in front of her, and she desperately grabs hold of the distraction to mutter a thank you. Nervous agitation leaves her running her fingers through her hair and pulling it over her shoulder. Gil would have chastised her for the fidgeting.

When she works up the nerve to respond, the casual tone she aims for falls, sadly, short. “You’re already wearing robes and an overcoat. The shawl clashes. Doesn’t even match the rest of your outfit.”

“And you were callin’ _me_ a fashionista.”

For fuck’s sake. How does he _do_ that?

“For someone that accused my ghost of being mouthy, you sure seem proud of yours.” She huffs—and when his smile widens again, this time wolfish, she realizes precisely the kind of direction he could take that line in considering the context. 

Expression probably comically stern, she jabs a finger at him. “ _No_.”

He cackles at the flat denial. “‘No’, what? What’d you _think_ I was gonna say?”

Groaning, she leans on the shop counter and drops her face in her hands. “Sky help me. What do you _want_ , Drifter?”

“Nothin’. Just wanted to talk to my favorite guardian.”

Oh, bullshit. She shoots him another skeptical look. “Come _on_.”

“Yeah,” he replies, slowly, and damn it she _hates_ that unending smile of his, “been a few of those already.”

Her eyes narrow and she honestly, truly considers reaching out and smacking him. Not only would doing so probably make Glyph happy, it’d make _her_ feel better, and he likely deserves it for more than just the obvious reason.

He lifts his hands in surrender, but doesn’t look the slightest bit apologetic. “Hey, hey, easy—I’m just kiddin’.”

She scowls, latching onto aggravation to fight off any lingering embarrassment.

At some point she really is going to have to take Glyph’s unhappy advice and stop seeking this bastard out. Every time she does, he throws her for a loop. He’s funny, he’s interesting, he’s oddly attractive, he’s absolutely _infuriating_ at times, and it’s—

—wait.

Going completely still, Quinn’s gaze goes long and unfocused as she rewinds her previous thought and wonders with horror where _that one specific part_ had come from. It isn’t _untrue,_ but—

“You’re a scary woman, y'know? Pretty sure all the Vanguard’d have to do to win this endless war is make you mad, then point you at the nearest enemy. One death stare like _that_ and they’d all be runnin’ for cover.” He lets out a short laugh. “I dig it.”

His voice is dark and rough, reminding her of what he’d said when she’d invaded in that first Gambit match—more specifically, the raspy growl of _how_ he’d said it. She shivers.

It’s a fanciful observation, a nice thought, and she sure as fuck likes to imagine herself having that kind of intimidating presence, but she’s all of five-foot-nothing. Beyond her speed and wits, she’s sorely lacking in the kind of raw power other guardians have.

All humanity’s enemies have to do to counter any of her attempts at intimidation is land one well-placed strike. Just one.

Maybe that’s the real reason Zavala had forbidden her from going after Uldren. The Barons are some of the most dangerous Fallen she’s ever seen; intelligent, organized, well-armed, and a major threat to even the most experienced of guardians—to even the members of the Vanguard.

She lets out a humorless laugh. “The vote of confidence is nice, but I’m all bark and no bite. No power to back it up. Just a big mouth and a lot of bravado.”

Her only abilities are defensive, the bubble shield and shift-warps only serving to keep her alive. Not terribly impressive on the battlefield, when compared to her allies.

He shifts in the corner of her vision, fingers of one hand tapping on the counter and a hand on his hip as he leans closer. “Pretty sure that fireteam you tore through a handful of matches back would disagree. What I saw watchin’ that match? That was a whole lotta bite. Kind I haven’t seen in a _long_ time."

“And?” She scowls, trying to ignore how close he is to invading her personal space. “I’ve got no idea how I did that, let alone what it even was.”

His brow furrows and he sits a little straighter at her response, giving her a shrewd once-over. Gaze shifting over to where Glyph is still sulking, when he speaks again his voice is part muttered awe and part interest. “You really were spittin’ fire instead of blowin’ smoke at that titan.”

“I don’t boast.” The heat of the look he fixes her with has her wanting to squirm uncomfortably for more than one reason. “ _What_?”

“Hey,” he says, leaning in again, “back in the Dark Age? Things weren’t as clear-cut as ‘titans’ and ‘warlocks’ and ‘hunters’. Guardians got it easy these days, mentors everywhere showin’ ‘em how to be— _gunslinger_ this and _voidwalker_ that, and so on.”

Confusion colors her features, but she listens with rapt attention. The Dark Age is a subject few want to talk about, and during her time attempting to catch up to a history she had in essence napped through, it’s the one that no one had been willing to explain to her.

Drifter had lived through it, and though she’s never had the studious nature of warlocks, she’s still interested in _learning_.

“Anyone ever try to teach you some of those flashy _supercharges_ this generation likes to show off?”

Her confusion deepens at the question and she turns on her stool to face him, ignoring the brief brush of her knee against his. She’s got no idea where he’s going with this, but she figures he’s got a purpose for it. “A few, but nothing ever worked.”

She’s capable of adapting some class abilities into her own, she knows this much.

Trying to turn her shift-warps into an invisibility dodge like the one Ash uses in Gambit with Nyx’s help has been mildly successful, and Nikon had managed to teach her how to adjust her bubble shield into a concentrated flat one like the ones titans use. 

Still, no matter how much she’s tried over the years, she hasn’t ever been able to get any of the stronger, more _offensive_ abilities to take to her own light. Arc, Void, Solar—she’s tried to reach for each of the typical guardian light elements, but her own light seems to defy _all_ of them.

His expression lights with muted excitement at her answer, and he grins, voice taking on a conspiratorial tone. “You ever think that’s ‘cause it’s like tryin’ to fit a square peg in a round slot?”

True understanding of his point eludes her, but she’s starting to follow along. “What, you think I’ve got some kind of class, or...subclass no one else has?”

He leans back and makes a face, lifting his hand and wobbling it noncommittally. “Close, but no. Y’see, all this new generation’s got themselves backed into corners. Sorted into neat little boxes.”

She’s never thought about it like that—and put like that, she realizes how strange it really is that guardians all fit into some kind of _mold_.

“Think about it,” he says, “warlocks these days, they used to be the only ones able to do that _teleporting_ thing they do, right? But then how’d _hunters_ learn to do it? How’s one class learn an ability that should be limited to _another_ class, if those boxes are so sturdy? Older guardians, ones that’ve been around for centuries, your _Vanguard_ even, they’ve come close to gettin’ it. Shaxx? He knows. Ask him about it sometime.”

She stares at him, mechanisms struggling to fall into place within her head. He patiently waits for her to put together whatever point he’s trying to make.

Then it clicks.

 _Oh_.

The moment realization dawns on her face, a wicked smile breaks across his own. “Yeah. _There_ it is. Light’s light.”

“The Traveler never meant for division into different classes and elements?” She asks, thoughts racing with wonder. What does this mean for _her_ , though?

He shrugs, unconcerned. “All I know is, way back when, there weren’t any _classes_ or _subclasses_ , just light, and we all had to learn how to shape it on our own. Dyin’ and bein’ revived over and over, that was simple enough. Actually _usin_ ’ the power we were reborn with? Sometimes the shape of it dodged us—’till somethin’ came along and _pushed_.”

A snap of his fingers serves as emphasis for the metaphoric epiphany, and he leans on the counter with an aura of satisfaction.

“So, what are you saying?”

“You’ve already _had_ your push. You just didn’t realize what it was at the time ‘cause your Vanguard’s _status quo_ has got you blinded.”

Her eyes widen when that final dot connects. “I haven’t tried going through one of the invasion portals in Gambit since that first time.”

The portals that ripped power from the paracausal darkness that the Taken King’s army existed within and put it in the hands of the guardians that used them.

A chill settles over her skin as she finally realizes the fundamental difference between _Gambit_ and the _Crucible._

Guardians have turned the power of darkness against their enemies before, but this _isn’t_ against their enemies—this is against fellow guardians. Wielders of the light. _Allies_. Drifter had said outright before the beginning of that first match that they could _feel what it’s like to be the enemy_. 

How has she not figured it out until now?

Discomfort and intrigue war within her, the stomach-turning effect worsened further by the way he’s looking at her. “So you’re suggesting…” She trails off, not sure she wants to voice it aloud.

“Not suggestin’ anything,” he says, head tilting with that same smile that she can’t decide if she likes or hates. “Just sayin’ that maybe you should try doin’ what you did last time. Might figure out what makes your light _tick_ and be able to back up that bark of yours.”

“You realize that, light or not, I still can’t be revived, right? Other guardians aren't like the Taken or...or Vex or any of the others. They all fight differently and I can’t predict them.” She swallows thickly. “They’re more dangerous.”

She glances over at Glyph, uneasy that she’s _glad_ it’s not within earshot of this conversation. It’s been patient enough to not run and play whistleblower to the Vanguard yet, but she knows that this would most definitely be its final straw.

Especially because she’s actually _considering_ his words.

“Hah! Don’t I know it,” he replies. With languid motions he flicks his wrist and produces one of his jade coins, twisting it between his fingers expertly.

She shakes her head and focuses on his face rather than the mesmerizingly smooth motions of his hands. “And you _still_ think it’s a good idea for me to willingly throw myself into that kind of danger?”

“You remember what I said after your first match?” He lifts an eyebrow, waiting for a response—and since only a little bit ago she’d thought of those exact words, she nods. “Good. Don’t forget it.”

Another flick of the wrist and the coin in his hand pops up into the air; she catches it and bounces it flatly in her palm, then looks at him questioningly. “I already _have_ one of these, in case you forgot.”

“That one’s different. Old one only gives you coordinates when I choose to send ‘em.

She stares at him. Is he saying…?

He winks at her. She goes stiff. “Meant it the other night when I said you’re welcome on the Derelict any time. I’m a good listener.”

“You are _such_ a smooth-talker, you know that?” she quips at him dryly, spinning the new coin between her thumb and forefinger idly. It’s hard to imagine he’s good at listening when his best skill seems to be running his mouth.

Some thought at the back of her mind points out that he isn’t much different from Cayde, in that aspect. She ignores it.

“Yeah, I’ve been told that once or twice. You plannin’ on shootin’ at me? ‘Cause that’s usually what happens right after.” 

“Still haven’t decided.” The sing-song repetition of the same thing she’d told him in the bar brings a gleam of amusement to his eyes that, again, draws her old smile out of hiding. Something bitter fills her chest; part of her still feels like it’s _wrong_ to be smiling when Cayde’s gone.

He laughs. “Okay, I’ll make sure to not get on your bad side.”

Coming from a man that, like a living contradiction, makes a habit of being aggressively friendly but prickly and aggravating, that could either mean a _lot_ or a _little_ , and it’s a fool’s errand trying to decide which.

“You’re gonna be fine. Those guardians? They won’t know what hit ‘em, and you got nothin’ to worry about.” The words are accompanied by a soft sigh, and he pushes away from the counter to stand. “You wanna know how I know?”

There’s something sincere in his voice that silences any sarcastic reply she starts to voice. She’s not sure she’ll believe whatever it is he’s got to say, but she’ll bite. “How?”

“‘Cause you’ve got _grit_. Kind that makes real bad guys nervous.” He pats himself on the chest as he backs away, shrugging with a toothy grin. “Hell, kind that makes _me_ nervous. Use it, darlin’. Don’t let the good guys make you soft, ‘cause that ain’t who you are.”

He turns away, and she blinks. “How would _you_ know who I am?” she demands.

She receives a wave, but he doesn’t stop walking. “Trust, sister. Trust.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hawthorne is _really_ fun to write. the drifter is, too. i'm having a blast, here, guys. someone stop me.


End file.
